People, mostly, say they can’t stand to go to car dealers to buy cars. And the guy that can write a check for the whole frontline can go buy whatever he wants, and now he can even do it right online and put it on his debit card, but the guy or gal who needs to finance and has crappy credit because they never paid for the other cars they financed need help when they have to buy a car. Back in the olden days of the last century, the finance wizard at the car dealer had the reins.

Now I wasn’t really the finance manager, I was the store manager, but I did all the finance chores, got the deals bought and structured the deals, so I had the reins at that store. I had a good relationship with all of our lenders and I got a lot of deals bought that other guys might just pass on and tell their customer to keep paying their bills and sooner or later they might be able to purchase a car but “just not today.”

In the mid-nineties, there was a well-publicized hit piece on Isuzu Troopers by Consumer Reports, I think. Seems when you went around a corner too fast Troopers would roll over. Immediately, Trooper value was nil. I was an Isuzu dealer as well as Honda, We didn’t sell many Isuzu Troopers so we didn’t have a bunch on the ground but we had a few. And I had a used one. It was a pretty nice rig, had fairly high miles but it was cheap. Well, not anymore. It was still fairly nice, had a bunch of miles, and was worth nothing. But it was mine.

We had a woman and her kid come in one Sunday and one of my guys had her. We weren’t busy so this woman was the “deal of the day.” I had put a spiff on for the used Trooper, so my guy was showing it to her like you did to everyone when you had a bonus deal on a particular car. Pretty soon they were driving it…my pulse went up, and I got my green colored marker out to write “SOLD” on the write-up sheet when it hit my desk no matter the deal. I wanted to print the report of sale but I didn’t know her name yet.

The salesman got her in his booth and soon, the write-up was in my hand, and the salesman stood there with the credit app in his hand and that look. The look that said, “This one won’t fly!”

He told me she was from Santa Rosa, which is a pretty big city sixty miles away with hundreds of car dealers. He told me she’d been shopping and no one could get her financed. I told him this was his lucky day. I would find a way to sell her the car. Then I ran her credit and looked at the write-up. She only had a thousand dollars to put down, on a twelve thousand dollar car. She had a bunch of bad stuff on her credit, including a repossession. They didn’t have the credit scoring system yet, but she would have a been a high four hundred probably.

But, she was looking at my sale-proof Trooper that I would lose ten thousand bucks on if I took it to the auction. So I worked the deal and sent my guy back to get more money down and get more info about her life. She had a good credit history up until a few years before.

I got the story from the salesman. She was divorced a few years prior and it was a mess financially, and the ex wasn’t pitching in for his kids or helping her. She had a decent paying job and had been renting from the same landlord for a few years. I went to talk to her and she elaborated on her story of riches to rags. Her kid was a good kid, well behaved and smart. And this woman needed a car. She was driving a rental that was costing her a ton.

She had put she had some money in a savings account, and she would be saving a few hundred a week on the rent-a-ride, so with pickup payments stretched out over the next month I got her to commit to five grand down.

We had one lender who I had a great relationship with a couple of the buyers there, and they had just started staying open on Sundays, so I sent my girl there the deal to look at. I also shotgunned it to others but figured I wouldn’t get answers until the next day. This woman was basically not financeable, but we had worked hard, she had thrown all in, and we had a car for her that needed to go away.

I told my friend at the bank the sob story, and I’m good at spinning a yarn, and I gave her both barrels and pleaded my case. We worked on it all afternoon. The customer waited patiently. She had been to a bunch of dealers and no one had bothered to ask her for more down payment, they had just shown her the door. I was the only guy that had even listened to her plight. And I was, apparently, the only guy that had a Trooper to sell.

I made a decision. This car was rolling and I was sending her home in it. She could leave the rental with me, I would get it back home for her. So I got all my down payment checks and did the paperwork. Halfway through getting her all signed up, my gal at the bank called for more info and to let me know the deal wasn’t looking very good. I told her she had to get this one done for me, I was gonna trip it. I pleaded and she told me she would go talk to the big boss and call me back, but it might not be until Monday morning.

I tripped the deal, we filled up the tank, parked her rental and called the rental company and canceled her contract with them, and packed her and her kid in the Trooper and sent them on the way. And I prayed. It was a long way to go to find my car should I have to get it back when I called to tell her I couldn’t get her financed. Sunday was over and we all went home. I didn’t sleep well. It was like waving your arm out the car window at ninety and going through a tight tunnel and not knowing how close to disaster you are.

The next morning the owner of the store was in and looking through the deals from the weekend. I walked in when he was looking at the Trooper deal. He looked up at me and said, “Where the hell do you think you’re gonna get this one done?”

The fax machine lit off in the other room so I went to look to give me a second to formulate an answer. The fax was from the bank, it said yes. So I said to my boss from the other room, “Oh, that one’s done.”