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There was a time when car salesmen had to sit in dark windowless rooms and watch the worst infomercials ever imagined. Take for instance…
This lovely gem. Two men who sound like they’re on the cusp of corpsehood trying to figure out what their last ride will be.
‘‘
Why bother encouraging an honest approach towards selling when you could simply offer ‘corn and cheese’ to the frontline. From the circa 1990 Chevy Celebrity Wagon…
To the 1998 Toyota Corolla. Complete with humor inspiring laugh track.
The one above is not exactly a salesman’s promo. But it’s very well done. Reminds me of how Chrysler once aspired towards greatness. Just like Poland did before World War II.
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Celebrity Training Video
I wish the Youtube embed code would work for me on TTAC.
The Aspen sales training video failed to address some common questions prospects had when arriving at a Dodge dealership.
1.) Why is the Aspen’s quality so bad?
A – Did you know Aspen has more hip room in the back?
2.) What kind of warranty does the Aspen have if it falls apart as fast as the Aspens and Volares do on the road today?
A – Did you know that Aspen has pot metal door handles?
3.) Is towing free?
A – Did you know that Aspen has a catchy song in it’s TV ads?
4.) Can I have my Dart back if this Aspen craps out within the year?
A – Did you know that Henry Ford was an anti-semite?
5.) Do I have to still make car payments even when the Aspen is in your repair shop?
A – Did you know that every Aspen comes with free sausage for a week?
6.) Which color hides future rust best?
A – What can we do to get you to buy an Aspen today?
7.) Will the exhaust system fall off within six months?
A – You are a very handsome man but will be even more handsome in an Aspen!
8.) Honestly, isn’t the Aspen just an updated Dart that has the build quality of a Fiat?
A – We’ll give you top trade in dollar on your 1967 Dart for this new Aspen.
9.) What the hell is wrong with this new Aspen?
A – Oh, nothing our shop can fix up in a jiffy!
10.)You sold me a piece of $#!t, you son-of-a-&!t(h!!
A – Do I know you?
[gumby]MY BRAIN HURTS.[/gumby]
I am shocked and dismayed at the omission of Brendan Spleen touting the virtues of the new Pontiac T-1000.
I really enjoyed them.
I found the Caprice classic video so hilarious. Kind of sad though, who were they selling to? Octogenarians who were looking for one last hooray? “No, Johnson, I think we shouldn’t invest more money into replacing the full-size chevy model, we’ll just aim it at really old folks. It’ll be easy, we’ll remind them of a time when blacks weren’t so uppity and they can reminisce about how poorly cars were designed in the 1950s…”
????
Admittedly the 1990 was a bit of a throw-back style. I factory ordered a 1991 when the new style came out. I was 29, not 80.
I had a 22′, 3,500 lb boat to tow, I lived in a small town 90 minutes from the big city so when I was too drunk to drive, I needed a place to crash. The 7′ bed in the back (with the 3″ foam mattress I had rolled up in the back) was very cozy for sleeping – or other things (nudge, nudge.) I had the windows in the back nearly blacked out. I had a 200W Panasonic Cd system installed, with cross-overs under the mid-seat and 8″ bazookas in the 3rd row footwell. (Alpines elsewhere.) I had American Racing wheels put on, and with the two tone, dark grey/burgundy she looked pretty damn hot – not at all like the dowdy wagon above. What a difference a year makes!
You couch potato critics can poo-pooh and look down your noses all you want. Back in ’90 or ’91, what were the alternatives if you needed to tow, needed space for your business and occasionally needed to haul a brood? I test drove the all-new Previa. Pass: no amount of Toyota ‘quality’ was going to convince me that a 2.4 4 cylinder could haul that hefty beast AND my boat around. No way. Plus, the Previa was almost $1,500 more than the Caprice. My mother was up for a new minivan to replace her ’87 Grand Voyager. We looked at the all-new ’91 Grand Caravans. I loved them, frankly, but the Chrysler dealer in town that I would have had to use never seemed to get my ’87 Shadow ES fixed right the first time. Pass. She bought one anyway and loved it. The Astro? Ugly. The Pontiac Transport? The GM dealer had a neat looking all white one: white wheels, white fascia, special sport package. Myeh, I wanted RWD for the launch ramps. The Transport looked too small for Chewbacka to pilot it anyway.
I wasn’t really a truck guy then, so I never considered the Blazer, Silverado or F-150, although years later I did end up with a ’98 Blazer when the Caprice met black ice one blustery November night.
The T-Bird SC in midnight blue was my heart’s choice, but the supercharger reliability worried me, and there would have been no sleeping or nooky in the cramped back seat. Too bad. It’s hotness factor was definitely higher.
I can’t complain much my first two cars were Crown Vics/Grand Marquis so I was in the same BOF boat. I agree that in 1990 they were still about 5 years away from good-sized SUVs that could steal the job of the caprice/Crown vic. Still the fact that GM let this line sorta whither on the vine is reason enough to mock them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRyViEJ3lg
Corsica: The premier compact. I remember wanting to push my gf’s Corsica into a canal and report it stolen.
A colleague drove a Corsica V6 up until last year, he then traded up to a first gen Kia Magentis V6. I do not understand that man.
Perhaps he’s simply a masochist?
My first car was a ’91 Corsica v6 that was handed down to me in 1996. It took me 10 years to finally kill that thing.Good car for both learning how to drive and how to work on cars. Luckily parts were plentiful and cheap for it.
The best factory video ever: (there are 3 parts, this is the first)
That soundtrack sold me, I’d like mine in 6×6, olive drab please.
That Caprice video was hilariously awful, especially the first half. Man, I had to wipe the tears from my eyes.
Yes, revisionist history is great, isn’t it?
But that’s exactly how geezers talked about cars, back in that day.
And I gotta admit, the specs that the one Gramps is asking for sound pretty good in 2011.
It blows my mind to think that the Caprice was the same model year as cars like the Celica or 300Z. GM was not behind by years but by decades. It was the Rip Van Winkle of car manufacturers.
That’s hardly a fair comparison – 1990 was also the same year the C4 ZR1 came out, they were experimenting with turbo engines, the Quad 4, CRT info screens, and were just a couple years from the DOHC 3.4L V6 and the Northstar. And frankly, the H-bodies were large and at least in the vicinity of modern, if you’re hung up on full-sized cars. The B-bodies might’ve been completely anachronistic, but that’s because some people still wanted that.
If you’re going to call GM out on their use of technology, at least try and make it a fair complaint.
All right, then. Midsize sedans. Look again at that second video and then quickly flash to this:
http://www.maximaclub.org/download/1990-1.jpg
That sense of disorientation you feel is the effect of travelling 20 years through a wrinkle in time.
Interesting point about the Maxima… but not exactly a fair comparison.
Nissan’s midsized competitor was the Stanza… the Maxima aimed in the nether-regions of what we would now call ‘entry level sport sedans’.
If I remember correctly, it was a bit more expensive than the traditional midsizers but below the entry level luxury that was the Volvo 940, Acura Legend, and BMW 318i.
If memory serves me correct, the most direct competition for the Maxima was the Cressida and later the ES250.
Midsized vehicles like the Taurus? They were several thousands cheaper than the Maxima in almost every instance except perhaps the SHO. That model had a far more limited run than the Maxima.
As for the ‘oldness’ of the Caprice… one man’s B-platform is another man’s Toyota Crown. Markets with limited competition always generate nice amortized results for the manufacturer.
1990 Maxima MSRP $18-19k: http://www.cargurus.com/Cars/1990-Nissan-Maxima-Specs-c3108
1990 Chevrolet Caprice MSRP $15-18k: http://www.cargurus.com/Cars/1990-Chevrolet-Caprice-Specs-c1040
Actually the point isn’t so much what you get for your dollar or that GM did/didn’t have cars that could compete with the Maxima. It is that GM was willing to continue having an obsolete car like the Caprice in its lineup that dragged down its entire image for younger generations. And GM wondered why the average age of its buyers continued to go up? By trying to collect every last drop of revenue from a shrinking market and grasping on to antiquated notions of product line loyalty, GM assured it would continue to produce cars using too many model lines that soon nobody would want, while failing to concentrate its resources on something that would have long-term potential. Basically, for instance, in 1985 it should have killed the Caprice and a multitude of redundant boxy big car lines and gone all in on Saturn, instead of just dipping its toes into that pond.
Chevy had the Lumina Euro 3.4 – while the W-Bodies were massively flawed cars at the time of their introduction, it wasn’t exactly antiquated (DOHC, IRS, four-wheel disc brakes were all decent equipment for the early 90s).
That said, if you want to talk antiquated, look at the Nissan Micra, one of the last carbureted cars sold in North America. Or for that matter, look at all the SUVs the public went nuts for in the mid-90s – hammer-simple pickups with wagon bodies, almost all of them. In fact, given how the Arlington plant switched from building Caprices, to building all the Tahoes Chevy could sell, I’d argue the public cares much more about the package than the contents, making the B-bodies much more of a branding problem than an engineering problem.
You can still offer so-called ‘antiquated’ vehicles to a small audience while remaining competitive. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are essential to the long-term success of most large manufacturers.
However you are absolutely spot on about GM’s cannibalization circa 1991 and their complete inability to build and sustain younger buyers. Especially those who lived in the West Coast and majopr metropolitan areas.
But that goes far beyond the scope of this topic. I’m just enjoying the Youtube videos.
Well, up here in the hinterland, I factory ordered my ’91 Caprice wagon in January 1991, receiving it in early March. I was the ripe old age of 29 when I put pen to paper to the deal.
I had the windows blacked, out, American Racing wheels put on (white walled Generals turned inside, thanks!), and the Delco Cd swapped out for a Panasonic with 200W, 4 Alpine speakers, cross-overs under the 2nd row and 2-8″ bazookas in the floor well of the 3rd row. My canoe quickly and safely strapped to the rack, my 3,500 cuddy cabin behind me; frankly, I was the envy of many folks in town. It was reliable as hell, I was able to sleep (and do other things) in the back. The kick ass stereo made for great tailgate parties in the backyard of my house. And the cops never pulled me over!
My 22 year old sister traded her ’85 Dodge Charger in for a ’91 Baretta LTZ.
If you had to tow something mid-range in the late ’80s or early ’90s – what were you going to use? Pickup trucks were/are huge and they were a lot more ‘trucky’ back then (this was around the time Toyota was bragging it was going to conquer the pickup market – the first time, so the push to gentrify pickups hadn’t quite happened yet.) The Astro was the only so-called minivan that could tow 5,000 lbs (wait, I’m not sure if the Aerostar could, too…) but the 3.4 was surprisingly thirsty. The barn-side styling always made them sketchy in cross-winds.
No, there were not yet many vehicles that could tow in 1990 or 1991. I towed my boat a lot, and even dragged a trailer with well over 5,000 lbs worth of store fixtures from Atlanta, through Chicago, and thence over to Toronto.
The squared-off, Mac-Tac pannelled pre-91s were fairly hideous, yes. But with a bit of tweaking, the ’91 wagon was a very reliable, almost economical vehicle to drive. I was getting 23 mpg in mixed driving. With my boat, I was getting 17. Later, my Blazer that replaced the Caprice when the Caprice met black ice on ugly November night, would get 25 mpg in mixed driving, but 13 when towing my boat. Ouch. I missed the V8!
It was because of the Caprice that I became a die-hard GM fan. That car was built like a tank, and I drove it like I stole it. She kept coming back for more. The two tone, dark grey and burgundy paint, deep tinting and chrome, deep dish American Racing wheels had many people ask me if I’d had the car ‘tubed’ or modified in any other ways.
My father may have been ‘old’ but his passion was the REAL Chrysler 300s of the late ’60s. Our society has a pretty shallow and feckless at looking backward at history.
I won’t criticize someone if their choice is a $30k ‘girlie-car,’ but if people don’t understand the concept of the RWD, BOF vehicles and their advantages, then they should perhaps leave the thinking for the heavy lifters.
The dodge commercial is cool. Back in college, someone gave me a 15 year old low mile Dodge Aspen like the one in the commercial. I liked that car. Simple. Reliable. The six cylinder engine was noisy.
In the trade, we call that “power train presence”…
Watching the Aspen commercial, I almost expect to see Ron Jeremy pop out somewhere! And the “CB” option?? Bwah-ha-ha…love this stuff!
I recall (no pun intended if we are talking Aspens) that the Fairmont was specifically made as light as economically possible to be good on gas, which was a Malaise Era requirement. As such everything was done to lighten the car. I saw a Fairmont wagon that was rear ended and the entire back of the car buckled down. The rearmost side windows, framed in strong steel, maintained their integrity, keeping the glass intact. These frames were still attached at the front of the window cutout, and stood straight out in the original factory position, while all the rearmost sheetmetal was folded down, leaving big openings in the bent bodywork. Pretty odd looking.
Another thing: what makes Chrysler think the sales staff gives a crap about golf? Has anybody ever seen an Aspen with seats like that, let alone a shift? Those Malaise Era rides really sucked. And if that is how manufacturers really trained their staff, well it is no wonder Chrysler almost died back then. And note that today we are back to prop rods, cheap gooseneck trunk hinges and rigid side view mirrors. Good ol “value engineering”…
Newsflash: every GM sales training event I endured, right up until 3 years ago was the same agonizing videos, rife with sports analogies. The American-made ones were the worst. It may seem old school, but when a prospect walks on the lot, there is an internal war at many dealerships over who gets to talk to them and how they are to be handled. It’s not unlike a football huddle, or golfing strategy.
Besides, with probably 80% of the staff in dealerships being male, golf is bound to be actively played or at least understood by nearly all.
The hands-on stuff at GM was top notch. The trainers knew their stuff and never shied away from pointing out the competition’s strengths. Responsible manufacturers acknowledge that many (certainly not most by a long shot!) prospects today are better informed than the past, so there is no point in pretending not to know where the competition does something better. It’s much better to be prepared for an awkward question.
All manufacturer promos are like that. As serveral of you know my father sells John Deere lawn and garden tractors (and has for the past 30+ years.) When I was in elementary school, he would occasionally go to the dealership after hours to avail himself of the perks his boss allowed like using the presure washer and heated service bay to wash one of our family vehicles. Anyway, my dad would put me in the break room parked infront of one of the training videos. Being 8 years old, I actually thought they were cool, lots of action shots of grass being cut, snow being blown, gardens being tilled, and small utility trailers being pulled.
BTW if you want a REALLY bad dealer video here’s one from YouTube of the Crown Victoria right before Ford came out with the Areo Panthers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGmrS2ibdek At the end of the video a reference is made to a rumor that GM was going to switch the Caprice to an independent rear susupension for 1991. That one made me laugh my butt off. GM, get with the times during that bean counting era? HA!
I had a ’91. Drove it for 6 years, putting 150,000 miles on it. Best damned car I ever had. I towed my 3,500 lb boat to Florida and did the 3 hour trek to Parry Sound, Ontario at least 50 times. She went to her grave all original, except brakes, tires, an a/c condenser and starter. Oh, the power antenna froze up in year 3, thanks to Ontario road salt and my not reading the manual.
Yeah, the fake woodgrain dash was a tad ugly (I always meant to have someone lacquer it some other color), but she sat 8 legally and 11 in a pinch. I could sleep in it, put my canoe on it and ‘dated’ my Ex in the back for 2 months when we lived in separate towns. It came with one air bag (front passenger be damned, I guess!) and standard ABS.
I would have wished for the 5.7 because the 5.0 litre with the towing package was no Indy racer, but with the boat behind me she sailed over the Tennessee mountains. She was the queen of the launch ramp (I saw a hapless husband forcing his daughter and wife to sit on the hood of their ’97 New Yorker to load down the front wheels on the launch ramp – I can imagine conversation in THAT car o the way home!)
The more rounded ’91 wagon really did eliminate that Tupperware rep hauler style reputation.
Wagons have a bad reputation, thanks to the weekend warrior crowd, but after all – what is a Rav4, Equinox or Escape? Answer: modern station wagons with equally abysmal fuel mileage, high price tags, can only seat 5 and can’t tow.
Hey Amigo, I know you’re used to having do defend your choices but I’m not picking on you. I leared volumes about old school BOF RWD handling by hooning my Dad’s B-body wagons around in my teen years. Mad respect to yah. I’m just laughing at the fact that Ford would believe for a min that GM was going to go to the expense of putting an independent suspension under a car that was undergoing evolutionary change at the rate their own Panther was.
Now I see why there are so many more Volares than Fairmonts on the road today.
Seriously, I thought the Volare video was the most informative by far. Just saying that seats are comfortable isn’t as effective as showing the tape measure and depicting their contour. Showing crushed groceries is an excellent graphic illustration of the difference in trunk size. I really liked the line-by-line comparisons on the spec sheets, but then again, I’m an engineer.
These Volare-type comparisons and demonstrations are largely missing from today’s car ads, most of which I find to be stupid and useless, resorting to basic claims about cash on the hood and ‘we won’t be undersold’. Showing cars driving through blowing leaves tells me nothing. I want to know why I should buy your car, instead of the many other excellent choices out there.
That wasn’t a car ad, it was a training film for salesmen at Dodge dealerships. Here’s a 30-second TV spot for the same car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y_bROj_ZjU
But the dealer training video does highlight one of the problems with Detroit, namely its belief that competition entails having a pissing contest over a few statistics and minor details, instead of concentrating on the whole package. A measuring tape doesn’t make a car more comfortable, or interesting, or more enjoyable to drive, or a good value.
That, and the insularity is telling. As far as Detroit was concerned, their only rivals were each other. They missed the tsunami that was coming from the east, and we all know what happened as a result.
Agreed.
This is something you can notice in old ads for all sorts of products – not just cars. Ads used to be much more pragmatic, functional, and “real” than they are now – they tried to sell things in straightforward ways, and they often achieved some sort of cultural significance in the process. Fast forward to today’s TV ads…most are noisy nonsense that has nothing whatsoever to do with the goods being sold.
Ads used to be much more pragmatic, functional, and “real” than they are now
The “See the USA In Your Chevrolet” marketing campaign was pragmatic? (Then again, I suppose that it was; it really would be a bad idea to drive without keeping your eyes open…)
And again, that Dodge clip wasn’t an ad; it was a sales training video.
The Aspen video is like comparing turd “a” to turd “b”.
After watching the Aspen video, make mine the Fairmont!
But I need those glove compartment cupholders.
Were it 1978 again, I might have found the choice a bit more difficult. While it may have been built better, the Fairmont was definitely less substantial and lightweight than either the Nova or Aspen. Although it may seem like a funny thing to base a car purchase on, it’s completely true that the Fairmont glovebox door was a cheap, thin piece of plastic in comparision to the heavier, solid metal door on the Mopar.
I probably would have split the difference and just bought a Nova, preferably one with the 9C1 350 V8 police package.
Does anyone remember the 30-minute Cadillac Seville “infomercials” from the late 90s and early 00s? Speed Channel (back when it was called SpeedVision) used to show them. I remember the (supposed) engineers claiming that everyone else’s “dual-zone climate control” really wasn’t, and Cadillac had the only true dual-zone system in the world. They interviewed “import intenders”, and they talked about how Cadillac brought in engineers from all over the world. Of course, many mentions of the Northstar “system” were made!
This manufacturer video was much shorter, but it seems like they re-used some of the clips.
Ah, old training videos. I enjoy the hell out of these things, if only because I learn that I could order a ’78 Aspen with an optional CB radio and a 4 speed (with overdrive) standard.
… well, a step up from the in-dash turntable offered in late ’60s full-sized Chryslers!
Two men who sound like they’re on the cusp of corpsehood trying to figure out what their last ride will be.
You’ll be old some day.
Yes… but will my car come with ‘standard air conditioning’? That’s the bigger question.
Let’s hope so; polyester pants just don’t breathe!
The explanation of the Celebrity wagon’s so-called automatic seat belts made me wince. The idea was to leave them permanently latched, and then shimmy underneath the belts during entry or exit. Releasing them at the buckle was supposed to be for an emergency. Yeahright. Like most people used them that way then. Most just buckled and released as per normal tradition. Also, if the door pops open in a collision, the occupant of that seat loses belt protection! Brilliant design! (Rolling eyes and groaning) I remember when the rule came out effective with the 1990 model year mandating either 1) a driver’s side airbag, or 2) passive/automatic seat belts for passenger cars. So many makes (domestic -and- foreign) then took the easy way out and went with those hideous door-mounted seatbelt designs or those irritating motorized shoulder belts. Even my brother’s 1990 Civic hatchback had those door-mounted monstrosities.
True, but in 1990 air bag technology was very expensive and largely unproven. The dual stage technology did not come out until ’97 or ’98, I believe. My ’91 Caprice came with a driver’s only, and although I was eager to have it, even at the time I inwardly wondered how the firing mechanism, sensors, etc. would age over time – particularly with – 10 Ontario winters and 100 degree summers (farenheit in deference to my American cousins. Also, there was the issue with ‘pre-tensioners’ on the shoulder belt. Those were not available initially, either. As many studies have shown, in many cases having air bags and NOT wearing a seatbelt can make things worse. This is also true of having a loose, or ill-fitting shoulder/lap belt. The pre-tensioners greatly improved that (and if you didn’t like having a bomb in your face, you’re sure as hell not going to like the ‘pyrotechnic device’ under your seat! LOL
Teaching Rambler salesman how to sell muscle cars:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcD_DXi_6_U&w=420&h=315]
I’m partial to the Chevrolet Leader News newsreels from the 1930s. The car companies made shorts available for free to theater operators.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_rxLenSprA&w=420&h=315]
This reminds me of the video we had to watch from Acura corporate (they shut down the dealership for two hours so everyone from sales, service, the office, even the receptionists could watch it) circa 2008. I wish I had a copy!
This was the one that the CEO of Honda at the time (I believe it was Ito-san) basically told us all they expected brand sales in the US to exceed 150k units per year by 2012MY.
Let’s just say that hasn’t happened. Those expectations sort of went away along with people using their homes as ATMs. Well that, and the whole tsunami/nuclear holocaust thing…
That Aspen video was so awesome to see. My Dad sold Chryslers in the 70s and he brought me home a super 8 projector that they used to watch these videos at the dealership along with a whole collection of them. I spent hours sitting alone and learning the advantages of torsion beam suspension and the lean burn system. I really wish I still had those films, it would be a kick to see them today.
At the end of each one it would have the tagline “Extra care in engineering makes a difference.”
Oh, and I had a 78 Aspen. My Dad took it in as a trade; it was a blue coupe with the slant 6 and ZERO options. Not even power steering.
Thanks for my automobile addiction Dad, RIP.
Laugh all you want, but I want a wagon today that can handle a 4×8 sheet between wheel-wells. Also, if Celebrity could tow, why new cars are not able to, but just in North American market. And, no, I don’t want to buy a pick-up for towing.
I just don’t get why ‘luxurious’ Chrysler come out with unpainted black mirror cups? Where fleet favorite G-IV Taurus had them in the body color in all trim levels, save for LX.
All kinds of cars can tow … regardless of the market. My friend tows his Evo race car with an Audi S4. No pickup truck needed!
The first one begs for the MST3K treatment.