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New car salesmen didn't get the best of us

By Bill Stevens, Times Staff Writer
In print: Sunday, August 31, 2008

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She was my first ragtop, sleek and black with leather seats. On cool days, when the breeze blew back my graying hair, she made me feel young again.

True confession: That was the idea.

Nine years ago, she was already 3, but still full of life and power. Her six speakers smoothed away road noise. Strangers pulled up at stoplights and showered us with compliments.

Even as she grew old, she had charm. But as with any machine with moveable parts, she became vulnerable to trouble, something I considered with each crossing of the Howard Frankland Bridge.

There comes a time in the life of most cars when you are forced to make a decision: fix or replace. You can buy a lot of repairs for the cost of a new vehicle, so a new timing belt here, a water pump there seems the best course of action.

Perhaps I held on too long. Sure, there was an emotional attachment. But timing played a big part. My 25-year-old daughter transferred from her job in Washington, D.C., to Tampa and, as we know, public transportation here is hardly comparable. She would need a car and, of course, she didn't have any money.

It didn't seem right to just give her my faithful companion. She might be more inclined to take care of something she had to buy with her own hard-earned money. So we applied the Dad's Discount — you know, nothing down, $100 a month.

Before handing over the keys, I paid $3,000 for a mechanical makeover. She ran like new, which made us forget she was old.

That misguided trust found my daughter behind the wheel a few weeks ago on her way to Miami. A few miles from the first Naples exit, intuition told her something was wrong. She eased into the right lane just as the speedometer dropped to zero, even though the car chugged forward. Smoke belched from underneath. Somehow she managed to get off the freeway and into the parking lot of a Hess station, where a nice man gave it the once over and then told me via cell phone: "It's your transmission. She's fried.''

A tow truck hauled the wounded ragtop to a nearby Toyota dealer, who confirmed the roadside diagnosis.

Given her age and mileage (150,000), it seemed foolish to fix the car. The dealer, eager to make a rare sale in this bad economy, put my daughter in a loaner and we agreed to meet up in Naples in a few days. Tropical Storm Fay delayed those plans, but eventually we found ourselves in the showroom, going through an exercise that I compare to a root canal — negotiating with a car salesman.

We had done our homework and obtained pricing information from various dealers on the Internet. It helped that my daughter is on a strict budget — and that we failed to eat lunch before arriving. After three hours of stating and re-stating our offer to three different managers who whined that they would lose money with such a deal, we stood up and said, "That's it. We're starving. We're leaving.''

They accepted our offer. And as they went off to huddle, we celebrated quietly with a fist bump.

We drove away in a safe, quiet, economical new car and enjoyed telling our story — how we held our ground and defeated the desperate salesmen. What had begun so badly turned into a father-daughter bonding experience that will last longer than any steel machine.