Question Of The Day: Have You Ever Owned A Rolling Blood Sucker?

bloodsucker

 

A lot of folks like to point out that I have an unfair advantage as a car dealer.

I supposedly get easy access to tens of thousands of vehicles every week at prices that are often thousands less than retail.

There are only three problems with that assumption…

1) Most of the vehicles have moderate to major issues.

2) The costs related to my dealer license run well into the five figures.

3) Access to those auctions is not where I have my advantage.

The first two problems are merely the flip side of a coin that comes with buying cars in a wholesale market. Most of the inventory at the auctions are vehicles that somebody, somewhere, is trying to get rid of for some good reason. My goal is to always figure out the reasons before I buy the car. If I don’t, I’m screwed.

That used car dealer license I use is also just plain expensive. There is the car lot to pay for. the bonding and insurance to maintain, and then there is the time you have to take to do more mundane tasks such as processing paperwork and getting the vehicles ready for the front line. You can easily put forth sixty hour workweeks and accomplish little more than writing dozens of checks while transporting those rolling money suckers to a long list of places.

A repair shop. A detail specialist. Emissions. Oil changes.  When you buy a lot of cars, your savings go south far quicker than you can imagine. The rejoinder to this is when you finance  folks who usually live a paycheck to paycheck existence. you get to pay for the repairs on those cars too.

This brings me to the big question for today. Is there a car that has sucked you dry to the point where just looking at it made you recoil in the horror of owning it? I am thinking about the type of car that becomes an immobile barnacle bitch on your driveway.

Feel free to share…