I’ve experienced a mix. When we bought our last cars about two years ago, as I recall it broke down like this:
Acura - Came with us
Mercedes - Came with us
BMW - Didn’t come with us
Lexus - Didn’t come with us
Infiniti - Didn’t come with us
Audi - Didn’t come with
VW - Came with us
Volvo - Came with us
Honestly, in each case that they came with us (except maybe Volvo, which I don’t remember very well), I think the guy hurt his chances of making a sale more than he helped it. They all revealed themselves to be obnoxious, stupid or both. I’ve never had a salesperson drive the car off the lot for us.
Personally I expect the sales geek to be knowledgeable about his own brand and his customers - so I tell him what else I am looking at and ask him how his car is better.
This came from an Alfa Romeo training module I saw where they broke down their nearest competitors in a whole lot of areas - eg: rear seat space, airbags, head room etc etc and ranked them all. It is never a situation where one car is better in all respects, so what I am trying to find out is how this car is better for me.
Of the cars I drove alone,6, I ended up buying 6 times, or 100% of the time. Of the cars where the salesman accompanied me, 5, I only ended up purchasing 2 times, so a 40% sales rate. If you’re a car salesman, you’re probably better off not riding with me.
I had a similar thing with a Toyota dealer, as it happens. I drove my old beater car up which I had driven for 10 years after leaving school, and was looking at Celica GTs, and the dealer came up to me and first tried to get me into a car that was “more your style”, which was a Corolla. Then when I asked to test drive the Celica GT, he said “we need approved credit to test drive, and there’s an hour waiting period.” Meanwhile, I’d watched other people, mostly couples with screaming kids, who probably had a negative net worth, come on the lot and drive off with cars no muss no fuss.
I got steamed and told the salesman that unlike most of his customers I had enough cash in the bank to buy one example of every model of car on his lot (it was true at the time), and he actually guffawed openly in my face, turned his back on me, and walked off. I must admit it totally deflated me and I had no snappy response, so I left.
When Fierra was shopping for her supercar, each dealer treated us differently. The Lexus dealer would not even serve us. The Ford dealer treated us with suspicion. The Chevrolet dealer made us sign a form saying if we test drove the Corvettes we wouldn’t “race” them and such and our insurance would be responsible if we wrecked (in hindsight, even though she did buy the Corvette from that dealer, we should never have signed that form). The BMW dealer was downright openly insulting to us and I felt like slapping him. The Porsche dealer, however, was absolutely accommodating and tossed us the keys to even the $100k+ 911 whatever it was and said “go have fun.”
In the distant past I was offered to test drive a Ferrari Testarossa with no hassle, and I was dressed in weekend clothes and did not look wealthy (and at the time I couldn’t afford one of the wheels, let alone the car). I declined because I knew it was dishonorable to drive a car and waste the dealer’s time when I had no intention of buying. I think the only factual answer is “every dealer experience is different.”
Most of the time I have spent in dealers has been waiting for something with no real intention to buy anything. I have been looked after most of time. It has helped, I am sure, that I normally go there on slow hours and the salesmen are mostly bored and idle.
I once told a Jeep salesman I was just looking at the 4-door Wrangler while I waited for my truck which was being serviced and that while I would have liked to make some questions, I didn’t want to waste his time. He told me to wait a bit while he finished something and left. 10 minutes later, he came back and we took that thing apart piece by piece and had a blast at it. I didn’t even ask to drive it. All I wanted was to get a real feel for the amount of work involved in removing the roof, doors, windshield, etc. (a bit more than I thought, btw).
So yes, experiences do vary. Being upfront about your intentions might help.
But if you bought it, you would take the nuts off the doors and leave them off so all you would need to do is lift the doors off. And the top takes about two minutes after you get the hang of it. He didn’t drop the windshield did he? That takes tools.
When I ended up buying the Camry they were organizing the paperwork and doing a final detail on the car. They said it’d be about 20 minutes and asked if I wanted to take an MR2 Spyder out for a joy ride while I waited.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve heard they’ve gone down the same road as a lot of complaints in this thread. My dad was there looking for a new car just last year and was basically told “Prices as marked. Take it or leave it.” They’re the only Toyota dealership in the area and they know it.
As a mystery writer, I really needed to see the inside of a Jaguar. I called the Jag dealership and explained my plight. They were happy to let me come to the lot, smell the upholstery, and test drive any of their demo cars. (It was fun.) Of course they also tried to sell me one and pointed out that my Infiniti was just a Jag wannabe and I needed to move up.
