Wheels

by Arthur Hailey

  The ex-race driver, heavily bearded and now corpulent in middle-age, boomed, “Welcome! Welcome!” He wore a dark blue silk jacket with carefully creased black slacks and a wide, brightly patterned tie.

  “Good morning,” Adam said, “I’m …”

  “No need to tell me! Seen your picture in Automotive News. Step in!”

  The dealer held the showroom doorway wide. “We always say there’s only two reasons for a man to pass through here—to get out of the rain or buy himself wheels. I guess you’re the exception.” Inside he declared, “Within half an hour we’ll be using first names. I always say, why wait that long?” He held out a bear paw of a hand. “I’m Smokey.”

  “I’m Adam,” Adam said. He managed not to wince as his hand was squeezed.

  “Let me have your car keys.” Smokey beckoned a young salesman who hurried across the showroom floor. “Park Mr. Trenton’s car carefully, and don’t sell it. Also, be sure you treat him with respect. His sister owns forty-nine percent of this joint, and if business don’t pick up by noon, I may mail her the other fifty-one.” He winked broadly at Adam.

  “It’s an anxious time for all of us,” Adam said. He knew, from sales reports, that a post-holiday lull was being felt this year by all auto makers and dealers. Yet, if only car buyers knew, this was the best time in any year to make a favorable financial deal. With dealers heavily stocked with cars forced on them by factories, and sometimes desperate to reduce inventory, a shrewd car buyer might save several hundred dollars on a medium-priced car, compared with buying a month or so later.

  “I should be selling color televisions,” Smokey growled. “That’s what dopes put money in around Christmas and New Year’s.”

  “But you did well at model changeover.”

  “Sure did.” The dealer brightened. “You seen the figures, Adam?”

  “My sister sent them to me.”

  “Never fails. You’d think people’d learn. Fortunately for us, they don’t.” Smokey glanced at Adam as they walked across the showroom. “You understand, I’m speaking freely?”

  Adam nodded. “I think we should both do that.”

  He knew, of course, what Smokey Stephensen meant. At model introduction time—from September through November—dealers could sell every new car which factories would let them have. Then, instead of protesting the number of cars consigned—as they did at other times of year—dealers pleaded for more. And despite all adverse publicity about automobiles, the public still flocked to buy when models were new, or after major changes. What such buyers didn’t know, or didn’t care about, was that this was open season on customers, when dealers could be toughest in bargaining; also, the early cars after any production change were invariably less well made than others which would follow a few months later. With any new model, manufacturing snags inevitably arose while engineers, foremen, and hourly workers learned to make the car. Equally predictable were shortages of components or parts, resulting in manufacturing improvisations which ignored quality standards. As a result, an early car was often a poor buy from a quality point of view.

  Knowledgeable buyers wanting a new model waited until four to six months after production began. By that time, chances were, they would get a better car because bugs would have been eliminated and production—except for Monday and Friday labor problems which persisted through all seasons—would be smoothly settled down.

  Smokey Stephensen declared, “Everything’s wide open to you here, Adam—like a whorehouse with the roof off. You can see our books, files, inventories, you name it; just the way your sister would, as she’s entitled to. And ask questions, you’ll get straight answers.”

  “You can count on questions,” Adam said, “and later I’ll need to see those things you mentioned. What I also want—which may take longer—is to get a feeling about the way you operate.”

  “Sure, sure; any way you want is fine with me.” The auto dealer led the way up a flight of stairs to a mezzanine which ran the length of the showroom below. Most of the mezzanine was occupied by offices. At the top of the stairs the two men paused to look down, viewing the cars of various model lines, polished, immaculate, colorful, which dominated the showroom floor. Along one side of the showroom were several cubicle-type offices, glass-paneled, for use by salesmen. An open doorway gave access to a corridor, leading to Parts and Service, out of sight.

  Already, at midmorning, despite the quiet season, several people were viewing the cars, with salesmen hovering nearby.

  “Your sister’s got a good thing going here—poor old Clyde’s dough working for her and all them kids.” Smokey glanced at Adam shrewdly. “What’s Teresa stewing over? She’s been getting checks. We’ll have a year-end audited statement soon.”

  Adam pointed out, “Mostly it’s the long term Teresa’s thinking of. You know I’m here to advise her: Should she sell her stock or not?”

  “Yeah, I know.” Smokey ruminated. “I don’t mind telling you, Adam, if you advise ‘sell,’ it’ll make things rugged for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t raise the dough to buy Teresa’s stock. Not now, with money tight.”

  “As I understand it,” Adam said, “if Teresa decided to sell her share of the business, you have a sixty-day option to buy her out. If you don’t, then she’s free to sell elsewhere.”

  Smokey acknowledged, “That’s the way of it.” But his tone was glum.

  What Smokey didn’t relish, obviously, was the possibility of a new partner, perhaps fearing that someone else would want to be active in the business or could prove more troublesome than a widow two thousand miles away. Adam wondered what, precisely, lay behind Smokey’s unease. Was it a natural wish to run his own show without interference, or were things happening in the dealership which he preferred others not to know? Whatever the reason, Adam intended to find out if he could.

  “Let’s go in my office, Adam.” They moved from the open mezzanine into a small but comfortable room, furnished with green leather armchairs and a sofa. A desk top and a swivel chair had the same material. Smokey saw Adam look around.

  “The guy I got to furnish this wanted it all red. I told him, ‘Nuts to that! The only red’ll ever get in this business’ll be by accident.”

  One side of the office, almost entirely window, fronted the mezzanine. The dealer and Adam stood looking down at the showroom as if from a ship’s bridge.

  Adam motioned toward the row of sales offices below. “You have a monitoring system?”

  For the first time, Smokey hesitated. “Yeah.”

  “I’d like to listen. The sales booth right there.” In one of the glassed enclosures a young salesman, with a boyish face and a shock of blond hair, faced two prospective customers, a man and a woman. Papers were spread over a desk between them.

  “I guess you can.” Smokey was less than enthusiastic. But he opened a sliding panel near his desk to reveal several switches, one of which he clicked. Immediately, voices became audible through a speaker recessed into the wall.

  “… course, we can order the model you want in Meadow Green.” The voice was obviously the young salesman’s. “Too bad we don’t have one in stock.”

  Another male voice responded; it had an aggressive nasal quality. “We can wait. That’s if we make a deal here. Or we might go someplace else.”

  “I understand that, sir. Tell me something, merely out of interest. The Galahad model, in Meadow Green; the one you were both looking at. How much more do you think that would cost?”

  “I already told you,” the nasal voice said. “A Galahad’s out of our price range.”

  “But just out of interest—name any figure. How much more?”

  Smokey chuckled. “Attaboy, Pierre!” He seemed to have forgotten his reluctance about Adam listening. “He’s selling ’em up.”

  The nasal voice said grudgingly, “Well, maybe two hundred dollars.”

  Adam could see the salesman smile. “Actually,” he said softly, “it’s o
nly seventy-five.”

  A woman’s voice interceded. “Dear, if it’s only that much …”

  Smokey guffawed. “You can hook a woman that way, every time. The dame’s already figured she’s saved a hundred and twenty-five bucks. Pierre hasn’t mentioned a cuppla options extra on that Galahad. But he’ll get to it.”

  The salesman’s voice said, “Why don’t we take another look at the car? I’d like to show you …”

  As the trio rose, Smokey snapped off the switch.

  “That salesman,” Adam said. “I’ve seen his face …”

  “Sure. He’s Pierre Flodenhale.”

  Now Adam remembered. Pierre Flodenhale was a race driver whose name, in the past year or two, had become increasingly well-known nationally. Last season he had had several spectacular wins.

  “When things are quiet around the tracks,” Smokey said, “I let Pierre work here. Suits us both. Some people recognize him; they like to have him sell them a car so they can tell their friends. Either way, he’s a good sales joe. He’ll cinch that deal.”

  “Perhaps he’d buy in as a partner. If Teresa drops out.”

  Smokey shook his head. “Not a chance. The kid’s always broke; it’s why he moonlights here. All race drivers are the same—blow their dough faster’n they make it, even the big winners. Their brains get flooded like carburetors; they figure the purse money’ll keep coming in forever.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I was a smart cookie. Still am.”

  They discussed dealer philosophy. Smokey told Adam, “This never was a sissie business; now it’s getting tougher. Customers are smarter. A dealer has to stay smarter still. But it’s big, and you can win big.”

  At talk of consumerism, Smokey bridled. “The ‘poor consumer’ is taking goddam good care of himself. The public was greedy before; consumerism made it worse. Now, everybody wants the best deal ever, with free service forevermore. How about a little ‘dealerism’ sometime? A dealer has to fight to survive.”

  While they talked, Adam continued to watch activity below. Now he pointed to the sales booths again. “That first one. I’d like to hear.”

  The sliding panel had remained open. Smokey reached out and clicked a switch.

  “… deal. I’m telling you, you won’t do better anywhere else.” A salesman’s voice again; this time an older man than Pierre Flodenhale, graying, and with a sharper manner. The prospective customer, a woman whom Adam judged to be in her thirties, appeared to be alone. Momentarily he had a guilty sense of snooping, then reminded himself that use of concealed microphones by dealers, to monitor exchanges between salesmen and car buyers, was widespread. Also, only by listening as he was doing now, could Adam judge the quality of communication between Smokey Stephensen’s dealership and its clients.

  “I’m not as sure as you,” the woman said. “With the car I’m trading in as good as it is, I think your price is a hundred dollars high.” She started to get up. “I’d better try somewhere else.”

  They heard the salesman sigh. “Ill go over the figures one more time.” The woman subsided. A pause, then the salesman again. “You’ll be financing the new car, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’d like us to arrange financing?”

  “I expect so.” The woman hesitated. “Well, yes.”

  From his own knowledge, Adam could guess how the salesman’s mind was working. With almost every financed sale a dealer received a kickback from the bank or finance company, usually a hundred dollars, sometimes more. Banks and others made the payments as a means of getting business, for which competition was keen. In a tight deal, knowledge that the money would be coming could be used to make a last-minute price cut, rather than lose the sale entirely.

  As if he had read Adam’s mind, Smokey murmured, “Chuck knows the score. We don’t like to lose our kickback, but sometimes we have to.”

  “Perhaps we can do a little better.” It was the salesman in the booth again. “What I’ve done is, on your trade …”

  Smokey snapped the switch, cutting the details off.

  Several newcomers had appeared in the showroom; now a fresh group moved into another sales booth. But Smokey seemed dissatisfied. “To make the joint pay I have to sell two thousand five hundred cars a year, and business is slow, slow.”

  Knuckles rapped on the office door outside. As Smokey called, “Yeah,” it opened to admit the salesman who had been dealing with the woman on her own. He held a sheaf of papers which Smokey took, skimmed over, then said accusingly, “She outbluffed you. You didn’t have to use all the hundred. She’d have settled for fifty.”

  “Not that one.” The salesman glanced at Adam, then away. “She’s a sharpie. Some things you can’t see from up here, boss. Like what’s in people’s eyes. I tell you, hers are hard.”

  “How would you know? When you gave my money away, you were probably looking up her skirts, so you let her take you.”

  The salesman looked pained.

  Smokey scribbled a signature and handed the papers back. “Get the car delivered.”

  They watched the salesman leave the mezzanine and return to the booth where the woman waited.

  “Some things to remember about salesmen,” Smokey Stephensen said. “Pay ’em well, but keep ’em off balance, and never trust one. A good many’ll take fifty dollars under the desk for a sweet deal, or for steering finance business, as soon as blow their nose.”

  Adam motioned to the switch panel. Once more Smokey touched it and they were listening to the salesman who had left the office moments earlier.

  “… your copy. We keep this one.”

  “Is it properly signed?”

  “Sure is.” Now that the deal was made, the salesman was more relaxed; he leaned across the desk, pointing. “Right there. The boss’s fist.”

  “Good.” The woman picked up the sales contract, folded it, then announced, “I’ve been thinking while you were away, and I’ve decided not to finance after all. I’ll pay cash, with a deposit check now and the balance when I pick up the car on Monday.”

  There was a silence from the sales booth.

  Smokey Stephensen slammed a meaty fist into his palm. “The smartass bitch!”

  Adam looked at him inquiringly.

  “That lousy broad planned that! She knew all along she wouldn’t finance.”

  From the booth they heard the salesman hesitate. “Well … that could make a difference.”

  “A difference to what? The price of the car?” The woman inquired coolly, “How could it unless there’s some concealed charge you haven’t told me about? The Truth in Lending Act …”

  Smokey stormed from the window to his desk, snatched up an inside phone and dialed. Adam saw the salesman reach for a receiver.

  Smokey snarled, “Let the cow have the car. We’ll stand by the deal.” He slammed down the phone, then muttered, “But let her come back for service after warranty’s out, she’ll be sorry!”

  Adam said mildly, “Perhaps she’ll think of that, too.”

  As if she had heard him, the woman looked up toward the mezzanine and smiled.

  “There’s too many know-it-alls nowadays.” Smokey returned to stand beside Adam. “Too much written in the newspapers; too many two-bit writers sticking their noses where they’ve no goddam business. People read that crap.” The dealer leaned forward, surveying the showroom. “So what happens? Some, like that woman, go to a bank, arrange financing before they get here, but don’t tell us till the deal is made. They let us think we’re to set up the financing. So we figure our take—or some of it—into the sale, then we’re hooked, and if a dealer backs out of a signed sales contract, he’s in trouble. Same thing with insurance; we like arranging car insurance because our commission’s good; life insurance on finance payments is even better.” He added moodily, “At least the broad didn’t take us on insurance, too.”

  Each incident so far, Adam thought, had given him a new, inside glimpse of Smokey Stephensen.
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  “I suppose you could look at it from a customer’s point of view,” Adam prompted. “They want the cheapest financing, most economical insurance, and people are learning they don’t get either from a dealer, and that they’re better off arranging their own. When there’s a payoff to the dealer—finance or insurance—they know it’s the customer who pays because the extra money’s incorporated in his rates or charges.”

  Smokey said dourly, “A dealer’s gotta live, too. Besides, what people didn’t used to know, they didn’t worry after.”

  In another sales booth below, an elderly couple were seating themselves, a salesman facing them. A moment earlier, the trio had walked from a demonstrator car they had been examining. As Adam nodded, under Smokey’s hand a switch clicked once more.

  “… really like to have you folks for clients because Mr. Stephensen runs a quality dealership and we’re happiest when we sell to quality people.”

  “That’s a nice thing to hear,” the woman said.

  “Well, Mr. Stephensen’s always telling us salesmen, ‘Just don’t think of the car you’re selling today. Think of how you can give folks good service; also that they’ll be coming back two years from now, and perhaps another two or three after that.’”

  Adam turned to Smokey. “Did you say that?”

  The dealer grinned. “If I didn’t, I should have.”

  Over the next several minutes, while they listened, a trade-in was discussed. The elderly couple was hesitant about committing themselves to a final figure—the difference between an allowance for their-used car and the price of a new one. They lived on a fixed income, the husband explained—his retirement pension.

  At length the salesman announced, “Look, folks, like I said, the deal I’ve written up is the very best we can give anybody. But because you’re nice people, I’ve decided to try something I shouldn’t. I’ll write an extra sweet deal for you, then see if I can con the boss into okaying it.”

  “Well …” The woman sounded doubtful. “We wouldn’t want …”

  The salesman assured her, “Let me worry about that. Some days the boss is not as sharp as others; we’ll hope this is one. What I’ll do is change the figures this way: On the trade …”