That may be a prevailing attitude of the masses but that shows that you aren't desperate enough. My guess is that being a car sales person means you spend most of your time waiting, not selling. Why not use that time toward a constructive end. Why should any car on your lot be without an "expert" in it. After all, it is on your lot.

I remember seeing a program in TV about Japan. They showed a man standing in a side walk of a very busy intersection. He was yelling out loud about all sorts of petty and embarassing details about his life. Apparently, he was a new hire for a large company (I think it was a life insurance company or something) as a saleman. This was one of their "training" courses designed to help them develop a thick skin. This is an example of the reason why Japan has become the country it is now. It's a country with very little natural resources -- and the only natural resources it has in abundance is people and what they can do. Somehow I get the sense that if was in a Chrysler dealer in Japan someone would know a lot about Crossfires. Hey, that's just me...

 

I have no respect for car salesman. Why can't they just come out and give us a good price without having to keep coming back and doing the "walk out". I have to walk out the door before they lower their prices. Then I have to keep walking out to get that price even lower. Every time I walk out the door their "best price" keeps getting lower. Why waste my time with all these lies when they know exactly how low they can go???? Then they wonder why they have a bad reputation as liars.

 

There are good salesmen and bad salesmen, sorry persons. The good ones know the product and the bad ones try to ad lib their way through the whole process. I personally think that the person coming in to buy a car that day knows what they want and by the time he has got that far may know more than the salesman about a particular model, not always true but often this is the case. The bad salesperson is quite evident to the buyer and should be avoided at all costs, he will lose all interest in you as soon as you sign on the dotted line.
The initial sales pitch has often been done buy other salespersons at other dealerships and the buyer now knows what he wants and is now only considering the price at dealer A and dealers B, C etc. Salespersons are basically facilitators, they often think they just sold a car but the customer knew what he wanted and it all came down to price and availability.
Too many sales people are just drifters, and not professionals, they would have a hard time holding down a normal job.

 

If that happened to me id tell him to pick the fastest car on the lot and prepare to see what AMG domination feels like.

 

In January 2005 I went to my local Chrysler dealer which had a yellow XF in the showroom, and the salesman could not tell me anything about it. So I drove 30 miles north to another dealer, and at least they had one for me to test drive and could tell me their experiences with a coupe, since various sales staff had taken it home for test drives. Needless to say I bought from the farther dealership. They were quite impressed with my roadster when it came in, since it was the first covertible they sold. Sad to say, the local dealership (after 84 years as a Chrysler dealer) is on the closure list.

Maybe one sells more minvans, but it pays to know your product line if you are in sales.

 

I may be speaking out of terms, but at when we mention salesKIDS, age has nothing to do with it. My XF was purchased from a salesMAN who couldn't have been more than 23, yet knew the car's history (which I already knew going into the sale, so I knew he had done his homework.).

I think it's more the attitude. I can't really fault them too much. Perhaps in the larger dealerships, or those that deal with only a few car makes, it is easier for the dealership to train their staff about the cars, but in the huge mega-car dealerships with upwards of 7 different makes and who knows how many models, it could become a bit dicey.

I have much more respect for the salesperson that will say, 'y'know, I'm not 100% sure about (fill in the blanks: gas mileage, warranty, etc), let me check/get back to you. Being a woman who knows better than to bring my husband along just to look (since he will admit that he will buy ANYTHING), I also tend to have more luck with the younger salespeople, though I do wish that they would at least admit that they don't know something rather than making something up.

I guess that for me, where I live, it seems that the salespeople that I have come across aren't really well-informed or encouraged to learn more about the product that pays their commissioned salary.

 

As most of you know, the concept styling was by Eric Stoddard who worked for Chrysler at the time. Brit Andrew Dyson modified the design in conjunction with Karmann engineering so that it could be built using various Mercedes-Benz parts. There was no actual prototype mockup car made (mule) as everything was done virtually. Karmann built all the cars under contract and they are now in receivership but will continue as a viable company (if the Karmann website is to believed). As far Chrysler parts that make up the content, I can only find the safety glass marked up as Chrysler specific but there must be something else!

 

Sure there is, all the body panels, hood hatch they look pretty specific, stamping Chrysler on a part does not make it the only Chrysler part on the car. I cannot recall any of my other cars body panels having the maker on it other than a few stuck on labels maybe for identification and they soon fell off.

 

The car body panels were stamped in Germany by Karmann. I suppose that Chrysler could have bought the sheet steel from a US mfg. and and then sent it overseas and that would make the body panels count as a Chrysler sourced part of the car. Interesting way to do but it sounds expensive!

 

An SRT can take down an M5???

 

We still make sheet steel in the USA?


roadster with a stick

 

It was subcontracted by Daimler Chrysler so any part is a Chrysler division component. Parts for computers are made from components from many manufacturers from all around the globe, Intel etc but they are still Dell's, IBM's, HP's etc. The computer may say 'Intel inside' thats just marketing.
The Crossfire may have 40% Mercedes stock parts but it is a Chrysler. Trying to call the other 60% Mercedes parts does not cut it. If it was true they would have said 100% Mercedes parts for marketing purposes but it would still have been a Chrysler.
Love that Chrysler!

 

Your right. I was initially responding to the first posting from "green ghost" about the salesman saying that Chrysler was building the car and no longer contracting it out. The Crossfire is a Chrysler, built by Karmann in Germany. I personally have admired Chrysler for the companies styling. Wish I never sold my 1970 Dodge Charger! But I won't sell this little Crossfire. I going to drive it until the wheels fall off! lol

 

I refered to him as a sales kid because he looked younger than my 28 year old son who sells nissans. If he was an older guy, I'd probably refer to him as a sales idiot. It is very true, some sales FOLK know their stuff and others; like the kid who sold me mine-same dealership march 07, know nothing. Hence "cell phone holder mentality".

Anyone who is in competitive commission sales BEST know everything they can, to move everything they can. My son, last I knew, was averaging 28 cars a month..no lie! Why, 1) because he knows his cars. 2) treats people with respect and LISTENS to their needs 3) Has an extensive network of satisfied customers backing him up. I just would like to run into more sales REPs like that.

As far as people knowing what they want before they go in...not always. I knew nothing about crossfires when I bought mine and was dissappointed by the sales staffs lack of information. If Id been told more, like its part mercedes, stats, how much HP etc, that may of helped them sell it faster and for more. Lucky for me

 

My wife worked in a dealership and many people come in wanting a car, basically any car as long as they could afford it with their credit and generally liked it. When they could lease it they did because they got a better (pricier) car. Many had such bad credit ratings they ended up wasting the sales staff time because the deal depended on credit approval and they knew that they most likely would not be approved. They just went to another dealer and hoped they might pass muster there. Many of these cars when leased/sold ended up being repossessed anyway. They just had to have a new car at any cost and their credit rating went down again. A pretty sorry state to get into with max'd out cards and living over your means, but the card companies kept given them more rope to hang themselves with.

 

why can't you pay the price that's on the sticker? you can go back and forth with it. if i came out and gave you my best price you wouldn't even buy it from me. you go to the next dealer to "check" my best price and they'd eat 50 bucks just to sell you a car and then i look like the bad guy for not giving you my "best" price when really i did. thats why we go back and forth. the more i take off the more it looks appealing to you. the more you sit there talking yourself into buying it. the more your there the better chance i have at a sale. now that i sound like an a""hole, i'm really the most straight foward person i know. i never lie and i try harder than anyone else to meet the customers needs. but theres a way the managers want things done for me to keep my job and thats the way i gotta do them. i have no idea how i got in this business. fact of the matter is there's no winners in the way car buying is set up. it is what it is. the only way you would get the best price right off the bat is if cars were like everything else and u just paid the price on the sticker.

 

I never pay the price on the sticker for anything whether it be a can of corn or my flat screen, the sticker on my flat screen was 2600 but i left the store with a new tv stand $400, new Blue Ray Player $300, new surround sound $500, 10 blue ray movies $300, 4 year warranty $300, and my flat screen for $2500. My new bedroom suite was somewhere around $4000 but I bought it for $2700 plus they threw in a down comforter $500.

so I guess I've got people like you who pay sticker for everything to thank for my discounts on everything. Of course these places are going to inflate the prices but as a shopper of goods it's in my best interests to find the best deals while keeping the quality. If I can save $1000 on a car by driving a few extra miles then so be it, if we all paid sticker price and didn't shop around then there would be no compitition between retailers to get our money.

on a side note I do pay sticker for one thing gas but then again they've got us by the *****

 

i still dont see how carsalesman are horrible people when essentially your doing the same thing they're doing. your haggling and getting as much stuff as you can (the car) while loosing the least amount of asset(the cash) as you can. whereas we are trying to get as much stuff (the cash) as we can while loosing the least amount of asset (the cars) as we can. but we are bad people for some reason.

 

My cousin has been a car salesman for years. I bought a car from him and he tried to skrew me! I had to watch him like a hawk. I just think there should be one price.... the dealership's best price. I can get them to drop thousands off the price. Is that fair? I have nothing against dealerships making money on a deal. But to make thousands of extra dollars off someone is what I consider "taking advantage". Not sure how some car salesman sleep at night!

I bought my crossfire... I asked for a deal on a trade in. We agreed over the phone after I visited the dealership. I drove all the way in to pick it up and they altered the deal on me. I simply walked out the door and found messages at home. Then they finally agreed to accept the offer (for real this time). Meanwhile they tell me they will charge 600 for some tax I never even heard of. I argued with them and they agreed to remove it from the price. I ended up finding another base coupe at another dealership. Less money and better financing with no hidden fees. The original dealership messed around with me too long and lost a deal. They could have closed it if they were honest and did the deal that we both agreed on. Now you tell me if car salesman are honest.... not all are honest! You may be... but not all of them. They give you a bad name.

 

A new M5 (500HP but only 383TQ) can scoot through a quarter in roughly 13 flat, very fast. One of our modified SRT friends would leave them at the lights, with 500HP they would start to gain a little ground on the high end, but would still be beind....