Caspar Rader set sail for America in 1750. He traversed Pennsylvania – from Lancaster to Harrisburg to Carlisle – until finally pulling stakes and settling near the southwest corner of Virginia. His children migrated further west and settled in the eastern corner of Tennessee. Their children kept migrating until another Casper Rader settled in western Indiana. Many generations later my father migrated back from Indiana to the original Caspar’s stomping grounds and I was born back in the same neighborhood of central Pennsylvania where the whole adventure started.
Two hundred fifty six years of Raders in America and, in my particular line, I am the first person we know of to buy a brand new car.
Somehow I convinced my miserly self to plunk down a heart-stoppingly enormous amount of money in order to purchase something that is absolutely guaranteed to break either the day after the warranty expires or, better yet, two days after the final payment is made. Hot damn!
There were only two things that made this experience bearable: 1) that it will not have to be repeated before my 40th birthday and 2) that it’s a damned sharp looking car that gets good gas mileage and will give me very little trouble.
I told you I was a miser. And I’m old. So there.
For those of you with true grit I offer the following: exactly what I was really thinking while I was going through this horrendous process. Be warned: there are a lot of f-bombs to follow.
12/28/2006 – 14:34
One guy actually had the balls to ask me if I was only concerned with price. Of course I’m fucking concerned with price! What else would you compete on? Your grubby little dealership is located within 50 miles of probably 100 other dealers with the same exact offerings and you don’t want to compete on price? What the fuck do you intend to compete based on? The high quality of your hair pomade? The smooth shit brown your particular brand of hair dye maintains in your faggoty little moustache? Jesus fucking Christ! Do you think I give a flying fuck about your shithole podunk measley establishment?
I fought for two weeks to make a deal. One dealership emailed me a price quote for a fleet car, $550 less than invoice, $300 less than the best offer I ever saw. When I showed up to talk I got mealy-mouthed excuses about unintentional mistakes. Horseshit. Do you actually think I’ll buy a car when one of your employees flat-out lied to me? That’s the fucking price, this is what I fucking want – Yes or No? Enough bullshitting, I’m outta here.
Finally I thought I made a deal. $500 down, the price is good until Friday, no wait, Monday at 6 PM. Sure, no problem, there’s lots of these particular vehicles around. No worries. Oh, by the way, if we deliver a fucked up vehicle with 1,500 miles on it and you want to walk away we still get to keep your money to pay the poor driver who hauled the shit thing here. Christ al-fucking-mighty! If you want me to buy a car from you, it’s your goddamned responsibility to get it to your place. Not fucking mine. What are you, stupid? Why the fuck wouldn’t I go where it is, take the thing for a spin around the block and then plunk down a check? Why the hell does it have to be so difficult? So, I trusted – first fucking mistake. I gave the guy my $500, told him less than 200 miles delivered was a hard stop, and trusted. “Send me a VIN and the absolute numbers as soon as you can.” Fair enough. Today he calls and says, “Christ, that car was hard to find.” No shit brainweed, why the fuck do you think I was willing to trust your smarmy ass to bring it up from another dealer rather than cutting a deal with that dealer directly? “Oh, and by the way, because of the way the deal’s structured and the fees involved your cost is now $24 higher than we’d agreed on.”
Fuuuuuuuck no, it is goddamned not. My price is what we said it was, not one goddamned red cent more. What kind of a business is this? Do the rules change all the time? Are there rules? Or is it just bowb your buddy week as always? I have to fuck you before you fuck me. It’s like being in fucking jail at bathtime. Tie some soap around your asshole, get it in writing, TRUST NO ONE. Fucking-A Right. Oh, you’ll pay it out of your own little pocket. Well out-fucking-standing. Better that blood money goes to me than to be wasted on bucktoothed farm girls with big bangs and $2 black and white porn. Cockboy.
So, in theory I’ll own a new car by the end of next week. In reality I will probably once again confirm my already basement-low opinion of the human race and be stuck in a battle with the credit card company to recover the money spent to pay the alcoholic dropout that swerved my car up from wherever-the-fuck.
Wal*Mart may be full of people so large their short pants look like thong panties but at least they offer a fair, fixed price on everything they sell. No other industry in the world could get away with charging $20,000 for something that will be obsolete in two years and headed for the scrap pile in eight. What a racket.