My wife and I were on our way out to dinner the other night when we noticed a searchlight scanning the skies. We decided to follow it to see where it led. We arrived at a local car dealer. I said, “Hey, honey, they’ve got a searchlight!! Let’s forget about dinner and buy ourselves a BRAND NEW CAR!”
Just kidding.
Ok, is this what the dealer thinks is going to happen? Why do they do it?
To get your attention, a ploy which has now suceeded. Of course you didn’t buy a car on the spot, but next time you are going to buy a car, that dealership may now come to mind, which it may not have before. Flags, balloons, shiny objects, they try them all.
Maybe they were trying to send a signal to Batman
Another ludicrous ploy of auto dealers are the huge balloons. In my old hometown, two competing dealers regularly dragged out their gigantic Godzilla and King Kong blowup dolls and advertised “car wars”.
because now when you need a new car, you’ll remember where that light was, and hows there lots of cars down there.
Good ploy.
I miss the old plastic ‘propellers’ on a wire. I always wondered, as a kid, do those things have a name? and are they produced just to surround (usually used) car lots?
Well how else could you possibly have found the car dealer in the dark? 
Was it the dealership on Rte 7 in Tysons Corner? I was just out in front of my building (in Reston) and could see the lights moving on the clouds.
That’s the one 
I looked out my den window tonight seeing it. We live near Old Courthouse and 123.
There are several on Rte 7, I don’t remember if this is the Toyota dealer or the one just east of it.
I think it’s the Chevy/Pontiac dealer on 123 right between the toilet seat building and Rte 7. I grew up in a neighborhood not far from there, on the other side of the golf course. Funny coincidence that this is being discussed-- on Sunday I saw similar lights in the sky near Minneapolis and thought, “Must be a car dealership.”
Those lights must annoy the hell out of pilots!
And astronomers too, I suppose.