Way back in the old days credit was not as easy as it is today and no where near as cheap. For a while in the late seventies and early eighties a good home loan was in the seven to ten percent range and car loans were twenty-one percent (12 add-on) no matter how good your credit was. And the lending institutions were very strict about their credit-worthiness criteria. If you were financing a car, your credit had to be “gold-balls,” (see Car Talk Definitions), you had to have the required down-payment, and you had to prove income on almost every successful loan application.

I had a stunning woman come in one day and wanted to buy a new Riviera. She was a sweet woman in her mid to late twenties, drop-dead gorgeous, with blonde hair, dressed in the finest clothing you’ve ever seen, intelligent, and very articulate. We got along great and we found exactly the car she wanted to buy. The car was about twenty grand, which was a very expensive car for the times. We sat down to write a deal and I filled out the write up sheet. She wanted to put ten grand down and didn’t care how much the payments were, she just wanted the car. As I was writing her up and she was saying yes to everything I kept waiting for the complication I was sure would come. Nothing was ever that easy.

We started on the credit app and I found the snag. I filled out her name, address, phone number, and all the other pertinent information, and then asked who she worked for. She answered she was self-employed and when I asked her what she did to make money she answered, “I’m a call girl.” I had to ask her again just to make sure I heard correctly. I figured she was some kind of sales person or executive type. She answered, “I’m a hooker.”

I had already gone through a few hours of walking, showing, driving, and paper shuffling so I continued and when I asked how much she earned, “hooking” she replied, “Around ten grand a month.” In 1982 that was a lot of money. She said she could provide bank deposits, statements, and tax returns to prove it. She had a lot of credit cards, and was financing her home so I figured I’d just take the deal to the desk to figure this thing out. We smiled and I told her I’m sure we could put the deal together somehow. I left the “Occupation” blank on the credit app empty and had her sign it. There was nothing I wanted more than to be able to send this woman home in her new Riv.

Of course, every guy in every office in the whole dealership had spied my customer and the bawdy jokes commenced in earnest when I brought the deal to the desk. My boss looked at the write-up and said, “Well..looks like a deal to me!” Then he looked at the credit app and started typing the info into the credit machine. When he got to the “occupation” box he asked me what she did for a living, kind of exasperated I’d left it empty. I said, “Well, I didn’t really know what to put in there. She’s a hooker.”

The bawdy jokes got more intense and every salesman in the store was in the little sales office by then. My boss told everyone to get out so he could think. The line up of sales guys began cruising my office to look and oogle, and look some more. I’m sure she had that happen often and she smiled at every one of them and said hi to give them a thrill for free. My boss ran her credit. She was truly “gold balls.” So he called the finance guy to come take a look. She was clearly financible credit-wise but putting “hooker” in the occupation box would negate any of that. Between all the brains they finally came up with an occupation they thought would work and told me to tell her we had a deal. I was happy to do so, and she gave me a big hug right on the showroom floor.

We put her into finance where she bought all the undercoats, the overcoats, floor mats, and warranties and I got the detail shop to fill it with gas and spruce it up for delivery. We hugged again and I showed her how to work all the buttons and switches sitting next to her inside the car. It took me a least an hour to show her everything, (This part usually took fifteen minutes max). She gave me another big hug and drove away in her new Riv.

She also received a big work promotion that day. We decided the bank would know her as an “Entertainment Director.”-