Tom Gill, 38, owns an Oldsmobile dealership in Columbus, Ohio, that in the past year has moved $30 million worth of Achievas and '95 Auroras and whatnots out of its showroom and off the lot. Plenty of people bought new and used cars from this man, and he talks openly about how he got them to do so: "I never let a customer walk in my life. I had just one goal in life: to be the No. 1 volume dealer. What could I do to close that customer on the showroom floor now? Our approach was to deliver them now, sell them now, control the deal now. We didn't have that much trust in the customer. The belief was that he would sell us out down the street for $50."
Wait a minute. Tom Gill is still trying to sell Oldsmobiles in Columbus. Why is he describing his methods in the past tense?
Listening to Don Flow, 39, who owns nine import, Saturn and GM dealerships, mainly in the Southeast, raises the same question. "The old game," he says, "was let the buyers beware, crush 'em if you can, make as much as you could off everybody. Better to make a kill now than a friend for life. We basically also made our customers turn into s.o.b.s. If a really nice person walked in, they were a lay-down in front of us. The industry had a lot of fun with those techniques."
Old game? Had fun? That's what car dealers like Gill and Flow are saying these days, and the valedictory chorus is swelling. Of the 178,000 people who peddle new automobiles in the U.S., most form the brash bottom line between the products of Detroit's Big Three and potential customers. A growing number among these vendors of domestic wares are claiming to have found a kinder, more humane way to do their job. This new breed speaks, often in near evangelical terms, of basic values and touchy-feely sympathies that have traditionally been anathema in the cutthroat race to roll new cars the hell off the inventories as fast as possible. Says Gill: "We've found it's O.K. to be fair to the customer." Flow, whose dealerships last year handled $250 million in sales, insists, "Our focus is on creating friends rather than making deals."
Hearing such sentiments, veteran U.S. car buyers might justifiably pat the pockets where they hope their wallets still are and maybe run a pre-emptive check on their dentures, just to make sure. Are automobile dealers really deciding to treat customers like decent, autonomous human beings, or is this just another ruse -- call it the integrity scam -- to lure suckers back into the showrooms?
Whatever the motives, a lot of people in the industry hope that being nicer to the purchasing public will prove it is possible to do well by doing good. There is plenty of room for improvement. U.S. automakers have begun to compete more successfully against foreign imports; American cars last year accounted for 79% of domestic sales, as opposed to 69% in 1987, the year of the industry's worst performance against imports. A prime reason for this recovery is better products. Since J.D. Power & Associates, the auto industry's leading research firm, began tracking consumer satisfaction eight years ago, customers' ratings of the quality of U.S. cars have gone up 34%. On the other hand, satisfaction with how those cars were sold and serviced rose only 22%. This discrepancy worries Big Three officials, who want customers to be so happy that they will keep coming back. Sour sales experiences work against that goal.