'87 Buick Grand National GNX
Vaguely remembering the road tests at the time, "Corvette eater", 13.6 ET?
I also sold cars one summer, interesting...
I found out that car salesmen rate somewhere between lawyers and child molesters in public opinion, per an article written at the time.
I was good at it, had the beginner's luck anyway. I learned some life lessons. There was an old Buick 4dr on the lot that hadn't been detailed yet, probably not worth detailing or beyond it. Everytime I got in the car, I had to roll the windows down because it smelled like vomit.
I told my boss/mentor "Hey, we gotta get this car detailed, I can't sell it like that", and he puts his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly fashion and says "In life, there's an @ss for every seat". Touché.
Then I got disillusioned over the low commissions, let him know I was going to job interviews on my lunch hours - brazen - and landed a job at the SAAB/Nissan dealership just down the road, where you had to dress really well.
They wouldn't let me sell SAABs - even though I drove one - or Nissan, I got to sell the junk on the lot, anything better than backline cars to be wholesaled to auto auctions.
This is about when the recession started, and cars weren't selling.
Only folks buying were the well to do, and all they wanted was the ginormous Armada, but there was only one, a Demo, and not for sale.
At first, we had weekly - Friday morning - sales meetings with donuts, who was "on the board" who wasn't on the board, and how you'd lose your job if you weren't on the board for a whole month, meaning they'd have to pay you minimum wage instead, and it would be your first and last check all at the same time.
As desperation set in, we started having a sales meeting without donuts every morning, and eventually it came down to this "If someone drives onto the lot, and they don't buy a car, you may was well get in the car with them because you don't have a job".
So this carload of stoners pulls in, wanting to know where the Taco Bell was, a giant sign way up high on pillars visible for blocks...
I walk back into the showroom and my boss says "Pack your stuff, you're done" and I had to explain they weren't even looking for a car.
One day it dawned on me years earlier this was the dealership where I'd been sold an ex Ugly Duckling Rent a Car 1976 Volare station wagon with high miles, no hubcaps etc for more than high book, when it was barely worth low book - when I found this out and asked why, the explanation was "Because we can", and they were already trying to upcharge me some exorbitant amount "for something they'd forgotten to include" at the time of sale, and they "wanted me to come in" meaning repo the car right out from under me, so I hid the car a couple blocks away and walked up to the dealership to see a very large plate glass window right next to the stairs had had a brick thrown through it overnight, another happy customer I could tell...
One morning I came in and they just said "Pack your sh*t, you're done". No one had sold a car in weeks, but since I was the last guy in, first guy out. I couldn't get unemployment because I didn't have enough hours, so while having a mortgage, I went 100 days without a paycheck from anywhere. I couldn't get a job. I was either under or overqualified.
That's when I learned to eBay, and even though I did eventually get a job, I kept doing it, sales eventually exceeding my wages, and eventually my employer and I mutually parted ways, as I'd been on the job for over a year at my "let's see if we like each other for a couple weeks" starting wage of a buck lower than anything I'd made in years, and when I approached my boss about it, he went to the owner and got me a raise, $.15 cents an hour. I about flipped. The owner was old, in business since the 70's, in his mind that was maybe a decent raise but it wasn't long before I got disgruntled and it showed, especially since I'd been told by my boss Paul - we're still friends - that "I was the best he'd had out of the last couple hundred guys".
He was 30 and had been working there since high school. He still works there, but they were bought out by a large corporation.