New Car Madness

Hi All,
Finding a new car should be an good experience and by and large that is what we had recently after deciding to part with our Yaris. However, we were left aghast after visiting one showroom.

Firstly, let me tell you why we were changing cars. This was our second Yaris and we found it, like the first, an economical and comfortable drive. The first Yaris was an automatic and we enjoyed having her for three years. The only complaint we had was that the automatic gear box wasn't well suited to motorway driving. So we changed to a new one with a manual 6 speed gear box.

To begin with it was fine and seemed to suit us down to the ground, but eventually the 6 speed gearbox began to grate. Not literally of coursed, the engineering was fine, it was just tedious having to change gear so many times on even a short journey. The gears were so close together that unless I concentrated hard I didn't know what gear I was in. Let's face it, driving isn't easy any more; half the drivers I see are on the phone while most of the others are picking their noses in search of that elusive bogey.

Anyway, we decided we needed an automatic, but the cheapest automatic Yaris was out of our budget so we had to find a new model. All we wanted was a small comfortable car with an automatic gearbox, how hard could it be?

This is what happened at one dealership.

We parked our car in the customers' car park and walked along the front of the showroom looking at the new cars. However, this showroom, unlike all the others we had already visited, didn't have any small cars in the showroom, they were parked outside.

We began looking at one of these models and tried to open the doors so that we could sit inside and get the feel for it. That was our first mistake because all the doors were locked.

At this point we were approached by a couple of salesmen. One was a young lad who looked as if he had only just got into long pants and the other had daft spiky hair which made him look like he'd come to work on speedboat. The youngest of the two introduced himself as the sales manager and we had a short conversation about wanting to look inside the car and asked if they did it in automatic.
He said an automatic version was available and they both went off to retrieve the keys so that we might be able to sit in the car that we were looking at.

Well my wife and I stood there like a couple of stooges for at least five minutes waiting for at least one of them to return when we were approached by a man in a suit who looked like a bouncer from the local nightclub. If you think Joe Bugner you will know what I mean.

"I'm the manager, can I help?" he asked abruptly.
"We are waiting for your sales manager to come back with the keys so that we can look inside this car," my wife said.
"Leave it with me," he said as he strutted off looking like he was going to give somebody a left hook.

Another five minutes past while we circled the car more times than Sitting Bull and his trusty braves went around a beleaguered waggon train bound for Wounded Knee. To be honest, we were going off it and seeing as the salesmen didn't want a sale we headed back to our car.

Just as we were getting into our car, the salesman with the spiky hair was coming out of the back of the showroom at the other end of the building.

"Were are you going?" he shouted.
"Sorry we've waited around long enough," I replied.
"But I've got the keys to an automatic parked in the compound," he shouted as he held the keys aloft, just in case I didn't know what keys look like.
"Sorry, but you've had your chance," I said as I got into the car.
"Well piss off then," he said.
My wife, who at this time was still standing said, "I heard that."
"No you didn't," he replied.

In years gone by I would have got back out of the car and had it out with him. Reported him to the manager and all that stuff, but I keep trying to rise above that sort of stuff. So we laughed it off and hoped that when he got back inside his deserted showroom that the Joe Bugner look alike, would land him one squarely on the chin.

I won't mention which dealership it was or the make of car involved because during the whole time we were there we didn't see another customer and I guess there is no need to wonder why?