These Are the Weirdest Things You’ve Seen at a Car Dealer

“An angry wife pulling a gun on the receptionist of the Volkswagen dealership I worked at. Her husband, one of the salesmen, was cheating on her with one of the receptionists. She showed up and pulled a gun on the one at the front desk. It was the wrong one. In the end nobody got hurt, but that was pretty tense.”

I expected stories of dodgy dealing and weird marketing waffle, not this!

Suggested by: mustangiimatt

“An Auto Union Monza at a used car dealer in Santa Monica soon after they were the featured marque at the Monterey Historics. I went home, made some calls to check on its authenticity, went back the next day and it was gone. Another missed $10K bargain!”

The Monza, named after the Italian race track, set five world records in its development back in the 1950s, including driving for 48 hours with an average speed of 87.589 mph.

Suggested by: Ken Davis (Facebook)

“I had a 3-month car sales career but in those three months, man, the shit I saw.

“A salesperson got fired because he took a used Lexus out for lunch to the local Chuck-e-cheese, literally because he said he wanted to ‘snatch up a MILF.’

“The same salesperson apparently thinks it’s appropriate to turn on the seat heater for a customer and ask “how your aaassssssssss feel?”

“Someone’s old beater broke down in the middle of a busy intersection by our showroom and its engine bay caught fire. Our used car sales manager demanded that we help the owner to push the car onto our lot as we were running a ‘push/pull or drag Cash-for-Clunkers event’ five years after C4C actually ended and he was a potential lead.

“A customer came in with a lease return Forester – his lease was three years/36,000 miles and he’d put 98,000 miles on it. I got to be the guy who broke the news to him as to how boned he was.

“So many 18 year olds who genuinely think we’re going to let them test drive our WRX STI/Evo X MR/Viper when they rock up with two giggling buddies and reek of weed.

“Oh, and since then? A VW dealership in the midwest thinking they can get $10k ADM on a fucking iD4.”

You’ve just read exactly what I’ve just read, right? Dealers sound gross.

Suggested by: skipp

“If what the internet leads me to believe is true the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen is me walking into a dealer and buying my Mach-E and my Bronco at MSRP.”

Woah, that is rare! Markups are pretty prevalent today, if you believe what you read online.

Suggested by: Stephen Gradek (Facebook)

“I used to work at Tesla in the early days, and would moonlight for sales on the weekend doing test drives and evaluating trade-ins. One Day a Russian lady came into the dealer with her used model s and wanted to trade it in for a new one. It was odd to us because she had only bought it six months ago.

“I brought it into the service bay for them to pull vehicle diagnostics and luckily they put it on a lift to inspect for battery pack damage. There were literally 4x4s holding the subframe together, bolted through the castings and into the battery case. We pulled vehicle logs and found that she had been in a big accident (obviously) and upon further inspection the body was all skimmed in Bondo and bad paint.

“So likely she took it to an ‘off the books’ shop so insurance never got involved. She played dumb. We sent her packing, turned off her supercharging access for safety and liability reasons, and never saw her again. I sure hope she didn’t pawn it off on some unsuspecting buyer. Honestly couldn’t tell without the car on the lift. Always get a PPI.”

Did you buy this Tesla? Is it still running? Is this the first time you’ve checked under the body to see the extent of the damage?

Suggested by: oomzoom06

“When the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII was first released in the USA, dealers were sent a safety video by Mitsubishi that they were supposed to show to potential customers, prior to a test drive. It was big-league rally car stuff for the street. I sat through the video and promptly had my perception of all roads all the time performance changed for good.”

I can think of a few other dealers that could learn a thing or two from a safety video about the capabilities of their products.

Suggested by: Brian Swedberg (Facebook)

“Honesty

“Showed up on a Sunday. Door read ‘Closed’. They were actually closed. No lights on.

“Best dealer experience ever.”

An easy way to remove the worst thing about car dealers is to go when there are no salespeople around, I guess.

Suggested by: futuredoc

“I’m from Australia. In 2016 I brought a second hand, 2010 Toyota Aurion (Which was basically a Camry with a V6 and slightly different styling) for $11,990. I drove it for five years and put a lot of kilometers on it.

“In 2021 I traded it in at the same dealership and got $5,000 for it. Which I was ok with.

“Three days later I saw my old Aurion sitting up at the dealership for $11,990, exactly what I paid 5 years earlier 😂😂”

It turns out $11,990 in 2016 is worth $11,990 today! What’s all this nonsense about inflation then?

Suggested by: Cody Collins (Facebook)

“A woman standing across the street from a Pontiac/GMC dealer with several large cardboard signs screaming ‘LEMON’ and she herself was dressed in yellow and had several plastic lemons affixed to her clothes.”

I guess that’s one way to warn people from driving home in a lemon.

Suggested by: greenpig

“As new car dealers typically stock late model used cars, I was surprised to see my local Toyota dealer had an absolutely mint and ultra rare 1993 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.6 Sportline with a MANUAL on the lot. Only about 100,000 miles.

“Despite the sporty spec, it was German taxi beige, so it looked like a high performance taxi from Berlin during the rad era. All for only $5,000. I test drove it and it was wonderful. I cannot believe I didn’t buy it. It’s the one that got away.”

If you were the lucky buyer of this 1993 Merc, let us know. It sounds like a wonderful buy.

Suggested by: Ed Kim (Facebook)

“Right on the nose, the weirdest thing I’ve seen at a dealership was a used car seller in Lincoln, NE who was locally known as ‘Weird Wally”’ He sold junker cars for cheap, did shoddy work (when he deigned to do repair work), and never pretended to be anything other than what he was.

“Case in point: A friend of my dad’s bought a `72 Pinto from Weird Wally many decades ago, and came back a few days after purchase because the valve train was making a lot of noise. Weird Wally took the car into the garage, and rolled it out an hour later, running quiet as a mouse. Some months later my dad was helping this same friend fix a new issue, and in the course of removing the valve cover, discovered that all Wally had done was shoved a plastic bread bag in there to muffle the noise.

“Suffice to say that Weird Wally was a love/hate legend in Lincoln.”

You trust this guy with your cars?! America is so weird.

Suggested by: nebraxican

“A dealership down the street from me used to run an ad in the newspaper for an extremely cheap new Silverado. This was around 2005. I was just getting into the car business from the vendor side and showed up to the store to see how they could afford to market such a low payment. There was the truck, right in the middle of their showroom… missing a hood, and both bumper covers. They used it to get people to come into the dealership to flip them to another car.”

It’s weird that a clapped out old pickup is enough to get people into a car dealer sometimes.

Suggested by: Sean Lehmkuhl (Facebook)

“I once drove across country with a friend in her 1990 Saab Turbo. It was a wonderful car, but she ended up selling it for something newer only a few months later.

“How ‘weird’ to see the exact same car on a dealer lot, but with 60,000 fewer miles on the odometer! Same little scuff on the back bumper, same presets on the radio, same colors, trim, options, etc. Yeah, weird.”

Huh, that’s weird.

Suggested by: largeandincharge

“I told a dealer one time that I would be back after lunch, the sales guy handed me a $20 bill and told me to bring him something back... long story short, I had free lunch that day.”

What did you get? The last free lunch I had consisted of bagels and donuts, it was pretty good.

Suggested by: Jackie Bargeron (Facebook)

“Won’t win any awards, but the oddest experience I had was when the sales person used a calculator to try and explain to me (an engineer) and my girlfriend-now-wife (a math PhD) how much money we would save on gas buying the electric car we were haggling over.”

You know negotiations are getting serious when the dealer whips out a calculator and some top tier mansplaining. .

Suggested by: desoto61