Posted on 10/23/2018 4:25:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
This is the generation of group think. They only drive cars their friend’s drive. They live in the same neighborhoods and attend the same schools. They dress, think, and talk alike.Encouraging your children to be different is powerful but you have to start young these day. Yelp even tells them where to eat.
Personally I think he is miss remembering the “good old days”. In 1982 I became a car salesman (yes a low point in my life) and one of the things the manufacturer was trying to correct was the ignorance of salesman. They found that if a customer read a sales brochure they would know more than the average salesman.
Now if you can find a real truck salesman then you can get into technical discussions on towing, payload, tires, axle ratios, etc.
Cars are boring egg shaped front wheeled drive appliances. What’s to get excited about? SUVs are even worse.
“How can someone have passion...for a car that looks like every other car on the road, is a technology laden piece of “something” . . . .”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I fully agree. Nothing stands out any longer. There is no beauty or style and even Maserati has an SUV. Everything looks cookie-cutter. What is there to be passionate about? But I agree with Prager - young people do not pursue knowledge or mastery over anything because they can always look it up on their smart phones.
Has Dennis considered that internet automobile forums and product websites have given the consumer the power to learn all they like about a vehicle?
I usually show up to buy with more knowledge of the vehicle than the salesperson. All I need from them is a test drive. Even pricing and availability are available online.
The last 3 vehicles I bought I showed up at the dealership with the VIN number and print out of the vehicle. I asked, show me this vehicle.
And here is the final nail in the coffin of Western Civilization.
Women need men. Children need fathers. There, I said it.
Car dealers do not sell cars. They sell money.
The kids at the cell phone stores are pretty gung ho and knowledgeable too.
Good point! Most of the cars on the road today could pass for vacuum cleaners!
Bingo. My last car purchase was over 9 years ago. The sales rep was basically a gopher. It was his job to push the extended warranty and to try get me to use their loan company.
He’s not saying that being able to look things up is a problem, he’s saying that it enables less passionate people, who don’t care enough about the subject to know anything about it, to just “wing it” despite being totally ignorant of whatever they are doing and arguing. If someone had any passion at all for some subject he would almost certainly know something about it after a while, so not knowing anything at all about it is definitely an indicator of a lack of passion.
It is related to an idea that I have seen for a long time in internet arguments about the education system, that actually requiring students to learn facts or skills is useless (since they can just look them up) and the only thing they need is skills in “analysis”. It really amounts to a promotion of ignorance and the production of a servile population that, having no actual background knowledge on which to draw for the analysis of new information, is just subject to whatever the internet tells them.
Tying this back to his article, I do see it relating to the idea that all jobs (at least in a particular class) are basically equivalent and you can just flit from one to another without ever learning anything about any of them. You see the same thing occurring in the so-called news media, where a fresh graduate of journalism school can go off write about sports, biotech, and international politics, without knowing anything about any of them.
Sales Reps are trained to tell customers “they will look it up” rather than give a wrong answer. The company I work for has product training for all reps, but if you don’t know the answer look out up so you will remember the next time the question is asked by a customer.
I’ve done a lot of work with the retail industry. I’ve known owners whose business strategy was put out inventory, and hire salespeople who know nothing about the product.
For some reason, they’d make money hand over fist.
The financial incentive structure is what has changed in automotive sales. You used to be able to make a lot of money in that job if you were clever and willing to rip people off. The car dealers determined that this was a negative to their business, and removed those incentives, so now rather than attracting sharks it attracts a different less aggressive but more pleasant sort of type, and pays them so poorly they don’t even stay around very long to learn about the cars.
My recollection of my experience in earlier days is that car salespeople (especially those of foreign cars) were car enthusiasts.
Back in the 80s the dealers wanted salesmen, guys who could sell ice to Eskimos. I guess if they were enthusiasts it was ok.
My husband has been in the car business for almost forty years, his brother owns four dealerships. My husband has a loyal, consistent client base he has developed throughout his career, they call him and he gets them exactly what they want at a fair price and no hassle, these people don’t like going into dealerships.. He sees this all the time with the personnel ALL dealerships, including his brothers are hiring. They do NOT want experienced, mature sales people, they are too expensive, too old and can not identify with the younger market. They want “greeters, personable no nothings who turn the customer over to the experienced back office bosses and do not consider car sales anything more than an interim job and are paid minimal commission or just a greeting fee.
100% agree.
All the cars today are close substitutes for each other, seemingly assembled from the same components from the same suppliers. With too much nanny-state electronics that fail to engage the drivers, instead putting them to sleep. Not surprisingly, most people drive like they’re asleep. Most are. Probably Dennis Prager too. So why should there be passion? Should it be a surprise if we’re at “peak auto”?
It started with CAFE - ironically I think it was a President named “Ford” who signed that tragedy into law, right?
I still remember the good old days when a Pontiac and an Oldsmobile were two entirely different cars. That kind of diversity was a great thing ; )
Liking my 2002 WRX - the car just begs to be driven hard - but what I really want is a ‘66 GTO. Ragtop. Stick. 389 Tri-Power... some day...
Make America Great Again!
Subjective observation only, but my local bank is staffed about 90% with foreign born males. The only women I ever see are occasional tellers and all the management are men.
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