Noclegi Pozna?

Czy wiesz, ?e rezerwuj?c noclegi musisz zwróci? uwag? na kilka kwestii, które nie s? takie oczywiste jak mog?o by si? wydawa?? Wiele osób planuj?c wyjazdy wybiera noclegi w hotelach, nie wiedz?c o tym, ?e jest ta?sza alternatywa. Oboj?tnie czy wybierzemy pensjonat, pokoje go?cinne, agroturystyk?, hotel czy miejsca noclegowe, musimy pami?ta? o sze?ciu wa?nych kwestiach. Takie na przyk?ad hotele, bo o nich warto czasami wspomnie?, mo?na bez problemu spotka? w wielu miejscowo?ciach. Zarówno w du?ych miastach jak i niewielkich wioskach mo?emy znale?? tani nocleg w hotelu. We? my pod uwag ? taki Pozna?, gdzie jak w ka?dym wi?kszym mie?cie oraz w wielu mniejszych miejscowo?ciach turystycznych a? roi si? od noclegów. Tylko jak trafi? dobrze na us?ug? tak? jak noclegi poznań? Lepiej wybra? pensjonat, hotel, pokoje go?cinne czy apartamenty na wynajem? Je?eli szukasz ta?szych czy dro?szych noclegów w Poznaniu, musisz koniecznie sprawdzi? kilka miejsc.

Zacznij od hosteli. Jakie s? zalety pokoi w hostelach? Znajduj? si? one w najczęściej w centrach miast, bywaj? dobrze skomunikowane z restauracjami, dyskotekami, klubami nocnymi, instytucjami czy wreszcie kolejami, lotniskami oraz posiadaj? bezpo?redni dost?p do atrakcji turystycznych.

Na rynku firm oferuj?cych noclegi w Poznaniu jest wielgachna i krwio?ercza konkurencja, zatem nale?a?oby zwróci? uwag? na kilka szalenie istotnych i niekwestionowanie wa?nych kwestii wybieraj?c dobry nocleg. Przede wszystkim nale?y sprawdzi? jakie jest zaplecze danego miejsca noclegowego – czy pokoje s? jedno, dwu czy wieloosobowe, jak wygl?daj? ?azienki, czy pokoje s? wyposa?one w telewizory, lodówki oraz sta?y dost?p do internetu. Warto zwróci? uwag? te? na to, czy hostel zapewnia posi?ki takie jak ?niadania, obiady, obiadokolacje i kolacje, czy mo?na w nim dosta? map? okolicy oraz informator o ciekawych wydarzeniach w mie?cie.

Zalet? hostelu jest to, ?e panuje w nim rodzinna i nieskr?powana atmosfera, mniej formalna ni? w hotelu, a jednocze?nie nie taka prymitywna jak w schroniskach m?odzie?owych. Jak znale?? dobry hostel? Je?eli na przyk?ad szukasz hostelu w Poznaniu, to mo?esz popyta? si? znajomych, którzy w tym mie?cie mieszkaj?, poczyta? opinie o noclegach w internecie, sprawdzi? ranking hosteli publikowany w wielu magazynach czy skorzysta? z wyszukiwarek i katalogów miejsc noclegowych. Wystarczy wpisa? kilka hase? takich jak Hostel Poznań, Noclegi Poznań czy Tanie Noclegi w Poznaniu, ?eby zapozna? si? z ca?? ofert? miejsc noclegowych w tym mie?cie. Pami?taj jednak o tym, ?e mimo tego, ?e hostele nie s? hotelami, to obowi?zuj? w nich te same zasady!

With GM’s recent announcement of $7.6 billion in profits for 2011, you would think that the taxpayers would get a nice chunk of those proceeds.

Well, we’re not even half way to that ship yet. UAW shareholders though are a different story. GM recently announced that they will cut nice thick checks in honor of their UAW shareholders. As much as $7,000 in certain cases.

This will indeed be GM’s largest profit sharing payout in history. The prior high? $1775 per UAW employee in the glory days of 1999. In the meantime Ford plans to fork over $6200 as a maximum. Part of that has been paid out already. As for Chrysler ? $1500.

As Porsche prepares to launch yet another product that’s not a sports car, Ferrari has steadfastly ruled out diluting their brand with anything approaching a crossover or a sedan. The closest we’ll ever get is the all-wheel drive FF shooting brake (above).

Ferrari CEO Amadeo Felisa made an explicit statement closing the door on anything that’s not a sports car, telling Automobile’s Georg Kacher ”No, Ferrari won’t do a four-door sport sedan. We won’ t do a crossover, ei ther. That’s Maserati turf.”

While the Trident brand is saddled with bloated 4-door cars, Ferrari’s future offerings will get lighter and more powerful (thanks to KERS and forced-induction), but the legendary V12 may take a backseat to smaller engines. Felisa thinks that the adoption of V6 engines by Formula 1 will make it more acceptable to install engines with smaller cylinder counts in Ferrari’s future offerings.

One of my favorite sites to visit is Bobistheoilguy.com. Why may you ask?

Well, it isn’t because of the riveting commentary on various forms of vehicular lubrication. It isn’t the 475th Amsoil ‘associate’ visiting the site to hawk their premium priced wares. It’s not even the never-ending flame wars on Lucas oil products and “fuel treatment” fix-em-ups in a four ounce bottle.

It’s because of the deals on stuff I use. Namely motor oil.

One company called G-Oil has been a perennial coupon clipper’s dream as of late. With their $20 rebate on 5 quarts of oil  the out the door deal comes to only a visit to Walmart, an envelope with a stamp,  and tax. Not bad if you do your own oil changes.

Then you also have the Valvoline, Quaker State, and various store brand oils that always see fit to couple their rebates with clearances to remove old inventory at the parts stores. I average about 30 gallons of oil a year for top-off’s and such. Net cost per quart is usually right around $1.

There is a lot more to the site than motor oil if you’re looking to cut your costs. Want $40 off a $100 order from Advance Auto Parts? Keep track of the AAP Codes in this forum.  Free car wax and cleaning products? Turtle wax and Armor All tend to throw a lot of their older product into the discount bin.

Over the course of the year I’ll typically go to three places that are accessible for most folks.

1) Car-part.com

2) Bobistheoilguy.com

3) The discount and clearance bins at the nearby parts stores.

In my business this activity turns into a healthy mid-four figure amount of savings. For most car owners, you can pretty much save at least a c-note’s worth for what amounts to minimal browsing.

Once upon a time, Volvo built the V40 at the Nedcar plant, alongside the Mitsubishi Carisma. Volvo ended that partnership in 2001, but the Dutch managed to pull one over on Volvo, leaking early pics of their new V40 compact in advance of its Geneva debut.

The V40 will apparently be the first Volvo built on their new modular platform, and will underpin an S40, C40 and XC40 (count on the last one to be the most likely candidate for a spot in the future lineup). Different variants will underpin the “60″ and “90″ series vehicles as well. The V40 is said to be 2.2 inches shorter than the outgoing V50, making it a foot longer than a Volkswagen Golf. City Safety collision avoidance will also be standard. The Dutch Autoblog article mentions 1.4L and 1.8L engines, but that doesn’t jibe with Volvo’s new modular engine strategy which calls for 500cc per cylinder (and thus a 2.0L 4-cylinder). We’ll see what’s really going on in a couple of weeks.

No gullwing or “falcon wing” doors here. Ford’s new B-Max MPV has a unique solution to the problem of getting into a minivan without making a fool of yourself – pillarless sliding doors.

Rather than include a B-Pillar, Ford is using a new high strength steel that is strong enough to withstand the stresses that would normally require a B-pillar. The upside is 5 feet of unobstructed space that can be used for easy access to the rear seat, or for loading large objects. Only world markets will get the B-MAX, but this technology should filter down to other vehicles in the future. Once the B-MAX is unveiled at the Mobile World Congress Geneva Auto Show, we’ll have more information on how Ford pulled this off.

GM’s track record has been less than stellar. First we had the Saturn Vue Green Line, a very “mild” hybrid that paled next to competitors like the Ford Escape. Next came the extraordinarily expensive 2-mode hybrid system used in GM’s pickup trucks and full-sized SUVs, which cost far too much and delivered far too little. Finally, we have the Volt – ’nuff said. No wonder GM’s latest hybrid endeavor has come to market with little fanfare, no “hybrid” logos on the vehicle and no hybrid branding from GM. Can we honestly call the 2012 Buick LaCrosse eAssist a hybrid?

While the LaCrosse’s styling is dominated by slab sides and FWD proportions, the overall look is handsome, even elegant. Compared to the ES350, the Buick looks a touch more sedate while looking less like its kissing cousin the Chevy Malibu. The fairly high belt-line and increasingly popular four-door-coupe roof-line give the 16.5 foot long Buick an almost modern flair (without being so modern as to drive away traditional Buick shoppers.) Despite the modern styling, Buick has stuck to their dubious “ventiports” which make even less sense now than before with our 4-cylinder LaCrosse sporting six portholes. Maybe port 5 represents the motor and 6 is the battery?

While the new LaCrosse’s interior is not class leading in any way, it is uniquely styled. Personally I’m not a fan of the steeply sloped doors but the 40-inches of rear leg room may compensate for that. The dashboard in our tester sported Buick’s new “stitched” dash which is an injection molded plastic dash that has “cuts”  molded in and is then stitched with thread to give the look of a stitched dash without the cost. Overall, the effect works, but the acres of fake wood are less convincing. I understand the need to differentiate between Cadillac and Buick, but the lack of real tree in the LaCrosse is a problem when Buick’s self-proclaimed Lexus competition having plenty of burl-forest standard.

While many hybrid vehicles ditch the folding rear seats due to the battery pack’s location, the LaCrosse continues to offer a pass-through – although it is about 50% smaller than the V6 model’s hole-in-the-trunk. Also on the list of complaints is a trunk that has shrunk to 10.7 cubic feet and is still hampered by trunk hinges that restrict the cargo area. The lost space is given to the hybrid battery pack and associated cooling ducts. Instead of a spare tire in the trunk you’ll find an empty cavity with a tire inflation kit. Why not toss the battery into the unused spare tire space?

The first generation Belt-Alternator-Starter or BAS system GM used in the Saturn Vue and Chevy Malibu “hybrids” was unloved by the press, ignored by shoppers and euthanized after a short time on the market. Instead of trying to resurrect the fantastically expensive “two-mode”  system, GM went back to basics and fixed what was wrong with the BAS hybrid in the first place. GM threw out the ancient 4-speed automatic and replaced it with a new 6-speed unit. The two extra gears allowed Buick to change the final drive ratio for better “hybrid” performance while still having a fairly broad range of lower gears for passing and take-off. Next, they ditched the low-capacity 36V NiMH battery replacing it with a modern 115V lithium-ion pack. The transformation was finished off by a liquid-cooled motor/generator packing three times the punch of the previous generation (15HP and 79lb-ft of torque). In addition to being more powerful, the motor and electronics are designed for nearly continuous use allowing the hybrid system to operate over a broader range of speeds and conditions. The result is a 0.2 second improvement in the LaCrosse’s 0-60 time and a 25% improvement in fuel economy over the outgoing un-eAssisted LaCrosse. Despite the improvements, GM decided to take a cautious approach and is not calling the new system a hybrid, nor are they including the motor’s assistance in the 182 horsepower or 172 lb-ft torque numbers. The ES350, on the other hand, is inexplicably unavailable as a hybrid.

The addition of a battery and motor alone didn’t achieve the 25 MPG city and 36 MPG highway numbers – the Lacrosse eAssist relies on  active grille shutters, altered gear ratios, low rolling resistance tires, a new trunk spoiler, and aero improvements under the car to help get these numbers. The combination of eAssist and the other improvements are what increase the all-important combined economy score from 23 mpg to a 29 mpg. The highway figure of 36 mpg is possible due to the new final drive ratio, which allows the 2.4L engine to spin at a leisurely 2,000 RPM at 70MPH. Without eAssist, this would be a problem upon encountering a slight rise in the terrain as GM’s 6-speed auto is notoriously reluctant to down shift. Fortunately, the 79lb-ft of torque provided by the BAS motor enables the LaCrosse to deal with freeway overpasses and gentle rolling hills without downshifting or slowing. In comparison, the Acura TL delivers 20/29 MPG, the ES350 is less efficient at 19/28 and the Lincoln MKS rounds out the bottom of this pack at 17/25. The Buick is by far the least powerful in this group and some might rightly compare it to Lincoln’s premium hybrid, the MKZ, which returns 41/36 MPG, but the MKZ is a smaller vehicle.

Our LaCrosse averaged 29.9MPG during our 674 mile week with the car. While the start/stop system helped keep the LaCrosse from sipping fuel at stoplights, the system has to idle the engine to run the air conditioning so your mileage in hotter climates is likely to vary considerably. If you value MPGs over cool air, there’s an “ECO” button which tells the car to sacrifice cabin cooling in the name of efficiency. The transmission is fairly smooth, but to aid energy-regeneration, the 6-speed unit is programmed to be as eager to downshift when slowing as it is to upshift when accelerating. No matter what the engine and transmission are doing, the cabin remains eerily quiet due to some extensive work on the sound insulation. This car isn’t just quiet for a near-luxury car, it’s quiet for any car, period. Serenity does have a downside, as my better half was quite put off by the engine start/stops and downshifts when stopping, which were made somewhat more prominent by the silence. Personally, they didn’t bother me at all so be sure to get in a good road test before you live with the car.

On the tech front, our LaCrosse was equipped with the standard 8-inch touchscreen radio and optional navigation system. I found the user interface considerably easier to use than the system in the Cadillac CTS, and was amused by graphics and colors reminiscent of Star Trek The Next Generation. Buyers not willing to spend $1,345 on the optional nav system, can still get turn-by-turn directions via OnStar, although only the first 6 months of the service are free. iPhone and iPod integration are easy to use, and the user interface is very responsive. Unfortunately the maze of physical buttons are not as intuitive as the on-screen menus. Even after a week, I was unable to stab a button in the dark without taking my eyes off the road. Buick offers blind-spot monitoring on the LaCrosse in a $1,440 “confidence package” which also includes steering xenon headlamps and GM’s vacuum-fluorescent heads up display. You can see some images of the HUD in the gallery below. The monochrome display shows basic navigation instructions, speed and a digital tach but falls well short of the polish BMW’s HUD possesses. Absent at any price is adaptive cruise control or collision warning, features available in a majority of the competition including the ES350.

Out on the road the LaCrosse handles just like you’d expect from 3,835lbs of Buick; it squats, dives and serves up plenty of body roll in the corners, but then again so do the Lexus, Hyundai Azera and Lincoln MKS. If you want sporty and can handle the looks, roll into an Acura dealership for a TL. Buick has set pricing for the LaCrosse eAssist at $29,045 for the base model. Should you step up to the “LaCrosse with Convenience Group” at $29,600, you can choose between the 303 HP V6 or the eAssist drivetrain for the same price. AWD LaCrosse models are available only with the 3.6L engine. While Buick is quick to call the engines choice a “no-cost option”, the eAssist base model is $2,830 more than last year’s base four-cylinder model. At essentially 30-large, the base eAssist LaCrosse compares favorably with the $36,725 base price of the ES350.

As our week with the LaCrosse ended I was more confused about eAssist than I was when it started. This confusion has nothing to do with the actual system itself which worked flawlessly and had a decent impact on fuel economy, it had everything to do with GM’s naming conventions. Somehow I’m not be surprised that the first hybrid viable hybrid from GM, mild or otherwise, would receive little fanfare. While the LaCrosse will never set your heart alight with excitement, it combines an excellent ride, cabin noise levels that Rolls Royce engineers are probably trying to replicate and decent fuel economy with a $35,195 as tested MSRP. While I’d probably still buy the more expensive ES350 ($41,240 similarly equipped), the Buick is a solid product with decent mileage at a compelling price.

Buick provided the vehicle, one tank of gas and insurance for this review

Specifications as tested

0-30 MPH: 2.8 Seconds

0-60 MPH: 7.9 Seconds

1/4 Mile: 16.22 Seconds at 85.7 MPH

Average Fuel Economy: 29.9 MPG over 674 miles

Click for Larger Image

I’ve linked to this before from TTAC, but what the heck. It’s Friday, and we gotta get down on Friday — JB

She’d entered our dealer principal’s office as a coltish, blinking young woman, stepping awkwardly in new high heels. Almost six feet tall, impossibly thin, painfully beautiful, wearing a purposely dowdy pantsuit. It was always fun to see the new dealer reps arrive from Ford; without exception they were tall, good-looking young men and women with impeccable degrees from Michigan universities, earnest Midwestern faces, and a charmingly naive sense of the world. They’d meet the dealer, a hard-assed former B-17 pilot who had built the dealership with his own hands, and they’d meet the general manager, a hulking man with a Mafioso’s hair and the easy yet malicious attitude of a professional assassin, and those two old bastards would grind ‘em into the ground. We enjoyed the show. Sure, these kids were on their way to six-figure salaries, a home in Bloomfield Hills, and the outrageously hedonistic life of a Detroit executive – but before they could make the big money, they’d have to take a beating from our guys. Of course, things were slightly different this time. Our dealer principal had recently handed over the daily operations to his phlegmatic, fortysomething son, whose demeanor and physique had long ago earned him the nickname “Droopy The Dog”. Droopy had insisted on seeing the Ford rep alone, probably hoping that he could earn some respect among the sales staff by beating up a twenty-three-year-old girl. Rumor said this meeting was to discuss an extra “allocation” – the amount of stock sent to each dealer on an annual basis. We all knew what we wanted from this girl – we wanted extra allocation of PowerStroke diesels, we wanted more three-quarter-ton trucks, and we wanted to become an SVT dealer. With any luck, Droopy would get the job done.

When she walked out of his door, the awkward young volleyball player had become a triumphant Valkyrie. She grinned at the assembled sales staff and strutted to her cream-colored Town Car Cartier. From colt to racehorse, in one meeting flat. Our general manager frowned, went into Droopy’s office, and slammed the door. Hushed voices turned loud, and before long the two men were screaming at each other. The rest of the salesmen had melted away by the time the door banged back open, leaving me to face the general manager alone. He looked at me and said,

“Aerostars. Aerostars! The bitch made him take four AEROSTARS!.”

In a previous Avoidable Contact, I talked about the division between manufacturers and dealers in this country. As you now know, dealers are independent businessmen who spend their lives making their manufacturers utterly miserable through crookedness, greed, and sometimes just plain stupidity – and there’s very little the manufacturers can do about it. Actually, there’s only one thing the manufacturers can do about it: they can work the allocation.

Most people think the car business works like so: We, the people, decide what cars we want. We go into a dealership and buy ‘em, and then the dealers ask for more of those popular cars, and the manufacturers build them. The real situation is almost precisely the opposite. Every year, the manufacturers take a look at their plant capacities, their union and supplier contracts, and their P&L statements, and they decide what they’re going to build. After making that decision, they send their reps out to give the word to the dealers. There’s a bit of negotiation, as each dealer fights to get the allocation which will enable him to pay for his son’s trips to Vail, his wife’s outrageous shopping sprees, and his own coke habit. Shortly after, the cars start hitting dealerships. In the modern era, this process actually happens once a quarter, but it works exactly the same way.

Once the dealership has its allocation, it starts working to sell you, the customer, a part of that allocation. Sure, dealers can and do trade between themselves, and they’ll also order a car for you if you’re willing to wait, but in general, it’s critical that dealers sell from their own current or immediately incoming inventory. Meanwhile, the manufacturers are dealing with a variety of their own issues: oversupply, undersupply, parts availability, the ever-changing demands of their workforce, and random acts of fate. You see, the lines must keep running at all costs. Sixty years ago, Ford/GM/Chrysler really only made one kind of car each, in different trim levels, and much of the business was customer orders, so there was no need to predict the future. You simply looked at your order sheet and you told your plant what to build. But today’s customer won’t wait for a car. He expects the model, trim level, and color to be readily available. This leads to all sorts of stupidity. Some Hollywood starlet will be seen in a blue Denali, instead of a black one, and all of a sudden the black Denalis are poison and the blue ones are impossible to get. The customers are pissed-off, the dealers are pissed-off, and GM is faced with the terrifying decision: do we run fifty thousand blue Denalis off the line? Maybe they do. And then David Letterman makes a joke about “the blue Denali whore-mobile”. That sickening “thump” you hear is the sound of fifty thousand blue Denalis hitting the dealer lot and Just. Sitting. There.

Luckily for GM, the trucks won’t just sit there forever. The dealers will move ‘em. That’s their job. The next soccer mom who comes in eight grand upside-down on her current mommy-mobile will be told that, “Well, the black Denalis are hot right now, but we can make this deal happen on that blue one.” The fleet managers will work the phones, and all of a sudden the Regional Sales Specialists of a shampoo company will all receive blue Denalis. Country-club parking lots will start to flood with blue Denalis as all the dealer’s wives find them under the Christmas tree. Think this is an exaggeration? Then consider the fact that Buick once decided to survey the owners of Reatta convertibles to see what they wanted in their next car, and the number-one occupation listed in the survey responses was “spouse of dealer principal”.

Eventually, the blue Denali inventory problem will fix itself thanks to the dealers. Mark my words, though – the dealers won’t do it for free. And that brings me to the story of the beautiful young woman and the oh-so-homely Ford Aerostar. Back in 1995, the PowerStroke diesel was the hottest ticket in Ford-dom. We sold every one we got. We sold ‘em ahead of time. Three or four times a week, I would pick up my office phone and there would be somebody on the other line asking when they could come in and pay MSRP for an F-250 diesel. Most of the time, the answer was “No time soon”. The engines were made by Navistar, and Ford had guessed wrong when they told Navistar how many to build, and that was that. Until the day the Ford rep showed up. We’ll never know exactly how the conversation went, but based on the results, I suspect it went like this:

Droopy: We need more PowerStrokes this quarter.

Ford Girl: We might be able to work something out, if… (stretching seductively) you can do something for me.

Droopy: (leaning over with intense interest) What might that be, little lady?

Ford Girl: (in a throaty voice) Well… I do have some allocation I need to move, and… (Winks) How’d you like a couple of Aerostars?

Droopy: Oh, no. They’re poison. It took us eight months to sell our last one.

Ford Girl: What a shame. It’s just that I need you to have my Aerostars. I need it so badly.

Droopy: (confused but aroused) Keep talking.

Ford Girl: If you helped me with these Aerostars, I could be your friend. I could really be your friend.

Droopy: And… what do friends do for each other?

Ford Girl: Friends…. (in an all-business tone) get one additional allocation of light-duty trucks, F-250 or F-350, excluding Crew Cab variants but including up to two F-350 4×4 Regular Cabs and any other option mix scheduled for this quarter, with PowerStroke diesel option, build priority 2… (licks lips, lowers voice) for every Aerostar they order, with delivery in four weeks.

Droopy: (mentally calculating the five-grand-plus guaranteed profit on each one, versus the misery of “floorplanning” Aerostars) We’ll take… four.

Ford Girl: Oooh, you’re such a big, strong dealer!

It really made perfect sense. By 1995, the Aerostar was well past its sell-by date. Virtually nobody wanted ‘em – but Ford still had a line to run, employees whose kids needed to eat, and supplier contracts that had to be met. Why not squeeze the dealers a bit? Luckily for Ford, they had something to offer in return – an unequal share of those rare PowerStrokes. And that, dear readers, is how I ended up being charged with the responsibility of selling four Aerostars. I had a bit of a reputation in my shop for selling tough allocation to difficult people, so I became the “Aerostar guy”.

Believe it or not, most people who go to a dealership don’t really know what they want. Sure, they might have an idea, usually based on what their neighbor drives or something they’ve seen on television – but most people aren’t like gearheads. A gearhead shows up with option codes, invoice pricing, and thousands of IntarWeb forum posts under his rather girthy belt; a regular person comes in and says they want to see an SUV. With a little salesmanship, it’s possible to make the customer buy what the dealer needs to sell, rather than what the customer “wants” – which isn’t well-defined anyway. So for the next three months, every customer who walked onto the lot was shown an Aerostar.

Customer #1: I’d like to try the new Windstar. I’m really interested in buying a new minivan, and I love the idea of having good traction in the winter thanks to front-wheel-drive.

Jack: Really? Well, I’ll show you one, but first why not take a look at the Aerostar? It’s been proven to be durable.

—

Customer #2: I’m really excited about owning a new car. I like the Taurus. I have two kids.

Jack: Two kids? In a Taurus? The last customer I had like that ended up trading in for an Aerostar. Let’s check one of those out, too.

—

Customer #3: I just got back from the Army, and I’m ready to get a Mustang GT Convertible.

Jack: Well, sure… if you’re a wussy who likes girl cars. For real manly RWD tire-smokin’ fun, the Aerostar is the one to have.

Eventually, I sold ‘em all. I even convinced one customer to order his Aerostar in “Rose Mist”, which turned out to be very, very close to “Just Plain Pink” when it came off the car hauler. Did I mention that it was an all-options XLT, with an MSRP of nearly twenty-seven grand, at a time when a new Taurus was sixteen grand, and I sold it for $250 off sticker? That sale made me a legend —in my own mind, anyway. I became obsessed with selling pink cars and vans to people who didn’t want them, finally reaching my greatest triumph when a color-blind man… Oh, that’s a story for another time. The point here is that we sold those Aerostars. Nobody came in looking for one, there were no Aerostar ads on TV anymore, the truck was a solid five years beyond the point where anybody would have felt proud to build, own, or drive one, but they still got sold. That is how the dealer system makes up for its many terrible sins in the eyes of the automakers. They move the metal.

Oh, I can hear you out there. “Sure, Jack, you guys might have had to do that at a Ford store, but Toyota/Nissan/Honda/Porsche/Aston Martin don’t do that crap and it would never happen to me.” O RLY? Call your local Honda dealer. Tell them you want a base, five-speed Accord Coupe with no options. As Katt Williams says,

“Go ahead… I’ll wait“. Hmm… Are you back? Good. How’d that go? What? You can’t buy what you want? Fascinating. Honda’s been cutting back the availability of “DX” cars for a long time at the dealer level. The dealers don’t really want ‘em, and they don’t make money for anybody. Meanwhile, Porsche plays all sorts of games with its dealers. I happened to see a car hauler at a Porsche store recently, and it was dropping off a full load of spanking-new Caymans and Boxsters. Did I mention that it was snowing at the time? Why do you suppose the dealer agreed to take ‘em? It wasn’t because they looked forward to “floorplanning” – which is to say, paying interest on the loan which covers their inventory – for five months. It wasn’t because people like to buy Porsche convertibles when there’s six inches of snow on the ground. Instead, I suspect their Porsche rep told ‘em that taking ten mid-engined cars in the dead of winter might help them get a 911 GT3RS or two. Could it be? We’ll never know – but if you want a new GT3RS, I’d look around for Porsches with a lot of Boxsters under half a foot of snow, because those are the guys who can get ‘em.

Never forget that the real customer for an automaker isn’t you, and it isn’t me. It’s the dealer. Given enough time, the dealers will move whatever they’re given, whether it’s an Aerostar or an Aztek. We’re just the saps who take ‘em off the lots. So how can you get what you really want? The answer is simple: if you want a particular car, place your order and bide your time. Legitimate customer orders usually take priority over allocation, unless we’re talking about buying a Ferrari. But if you want a deal, then find a dealer who has the car you’re willing to take right there in his inventory. It’s costing him money every day, and he’s about to get two more like it off the truck. That’s how you can get the best deal, every time.

Speaking of deals… I might have been a little unkind to ol’ Droopy earlier. I might have underestimated him a bit. ‘Cause that Ford girl kept coming back, and pretty soon she started bringing a friend or two. And shortly after I left the dealer business to become the manager of a bagel store (don’t ask), Droopy closed that old rural dealership and opened a massive superstore off the Interstate, much to everyone’s surprise. It turns out he’d been making a bit of a proposition to that Ford girl, and it had less to do with her long legs than her ability to plead his cause before the big dogs at Ford’s corporate offices. When that superstore opened, there were three-quarter-ton trucks, diesel engines, and SVT Cobras as far as the eye could see… but there wasn’t a single Aerostar. You see, in the long run the dealers get what they want. Ford got what it wanted, too: a strong retail presence in a growing area. In this business, everybody ends up making up, and everybody ends up making out. Make sure you get what you want next time you’re shopping, okay?