When I worked at the Buick dealer in the early eighties we had a ramp to park cars on for display purposes. Today the ramps are made out of metal frames and are relatively easy to move compared to the ramp we had. It was made out of wood; heavy ass plywood and two by fours and took two gorillas and two trucks to move it on the lot. So it stayed in the same place, right out on Pecker’s Point next to the street and we’d drive our special deals of the day or week up on it with bright stickers on the windows, balloons, and flags.

The day the owner decided the bright red Cadillac Coupe Deville we had should be up there was the day the ramp finally found its match, and not because it wasn’t up to the task of supporting a two-ton car, but because of human error. The ramp was actually two separate pieces and the track size of a car determined how far apart to place the two separate ramp pieces to match the width of the wheels. The Cadillac was wider than most cars and the wheels didn’t line up with the ramps perfectly. But, like I said, it was a chore to move it, so it didn’t get moved apart

I was watching while four of my guys were putting the car on the ramp. They carefully guided the car up the ramps. But the driver didn’t have the car absolutely square to the ramp and the higher he got the more one side got closer to the inside edge of its track. When he got to the top where the tramp leveled out the car slipped off and crashed down, the whole right side of the car slipped down on the inside of the ramp until the side of the roof hit the ramp and stuck there. I was running across the lot screaming in the wind to STOP! Now it was hanging there, two tons of Cadillac, bright red, with no way to go. 

The car was close to slipping all the way through to the ground and I thought it would. But the ramps held ground and didn’t move so the car was stuck, one side pointed up and shiny, the other side pointed down and scraped and dented all the way down the side of the car where it scraped the ramp when it fell.

At that point, I thought maybe sales guys and stuck Cadillacs were no longer a good mix, and I turned the problem to upper management and the shop guys. It stayed like that for a day. They tried various solutions, more ramps, jacks on more ramps, and even a lift try by every employee in the shop. The car didn’t budge.

Finally, we called a local crane operator and he picked it up and set the car on the ground. The Cadillac went to the body shop for extensive reconditioning and the ramp went to the dump or wherever all those old wood ramps went on their demise. Progress is usually made by necessity.