Everyone please welcome Steve Lynch, author of “Arrogance and Accords“, as our newest contributor!
Yesterday I was working for the greatest automobile company in the world.
Today I am working for the greatest automotive blog in the world.
Yesterday I was working for the Germans.
Today I am working for a 25-year-old Canadian kid who loves rap music.
I am one lucky sumbitch.
I elected to take early retirement after 17 years at Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. The hardest part about leaving the OEM auto business is giving up the free company car. The 2015 ML350 you see above was my last ride and is currently for sale at Mercedes-Benz of Tucson (Low Miles! Illuminated Grill Star! Celebrity Owned!). God, it hurts…
An old retail automobile business adage says that the only things car salesmen need are the “3 Ds” – a desk, a drink and a demo. For me, that first demonstrator was a used 1981 Rosewood Brown Buick Regal that I drove while working at Spires-Douglas Buick in San Antonio. I clearly remember driving it off the lot after my first day on the job and thinking, “I like this business!” The days of salespeople getting free rides are long gone at most dealerships, no doubt a factor in attempting to draw new talent into the retail industry now.
The scores of Honda (all stick shifts by the way) and Mercedes-Benz vehicles parked in my garage over the years were nice but my favorite ride was a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited High Output V8 I drove during the year I was sentenced to work on the Chrysler Financial side of our company. I was our auction rep in Arizona, selling repossessed Neons and off-lease Jeeps, and the GC could flat-out fly over the whoops on the rugged Apache Trail outside of Phoenix.
Stories of wrecked demos are commonplace as there can be a certain “it’s not my car” mentality to driving one, as illustrated in this funny company car features page. In my own case, I tell people my last accident was in 1977 because I don’t count the night in Dallas in 1988 while coming home from Adair’s Saloon that I discovered that the counter rotation of the wheels on a 4-Wheel Steering Prelude negated my ability to execute a perfect bootlegger’s turn. I slid sideways hard into a curb and destroyed the suspension but somehow limped her home, dragging one tire all the way. Thank God it was during the corrupt days at American Honda: I traded a load of Accords to a dealer in return for him replacing the Prelude and making the wrecked one disappear. I think that night was the end of my drinking and driving days and I have never put more than a scratch on a demo after that. Besides, get in an accident or get pinched for DUI in a OEM car and you could lose your job or, if you are lucky, keep your job but have to buy your own car.
I can take solace in the fact that I will driving the occasional press car for test drive purposes. You may wonder if I will be biased in favor of Honda and Mercedes-Benz. Of course I will. But I told Derek those are the last two brands I want to write about. I will pen a few stories about my days working for those corporations but I owe it to you to explore and write about all brands and all automotive companies. Besides, I already know how most of you feel about Mercedes-Benz vehicles…
I am thrilled to be reporting to you from the Tucson TTAC Tower and can promise you only one thing: the truth.
Welcome!
Already captured my attention and I look forward to your writing!
Where is the Tucson TTAC tower? High atop El Guero Canelo?
Welcome too TTAC. Your point of view will be interesting to read. We need people from inside the biz to contribute.
Your name is Steve, your last name starts with L, and you’re in the car business and auctions.
What are you trying to pull!?
Jk.
I’m thinking his name is just about perfect.
I know what you’re saying, but you’ve got it wrong. Steve Lynch is one of our Massachusetts congressmen–the one whose district includes Southie. But if Sonny Bono coiuld be both a rock star and a congressman, Steve Lynch can be both a congressman and an automotive journalist.
But, to prove the latter, Mr. Lynch, could you please explain what the bootlegger’s turn is?
I was referencing the similarity to Mr. Steve Lang, actually! I didn’t know any political reference :).
That was certainly an apt reference!
David, maybe it is better described as a “handbrake 180”? Easy to do on snow and ice, but not so much on pavement…
To further confound your auto-related blog viewing, there is another Steve L, an excellent new writer over at Jalopnik, Steve Lehto, who is a recall and lemon law specialist and offers lots of good, real-life stories and advice.
I personally know Steve Lehto.
He’s the rebuttal for every negative stereotype regarding attorneys under the sun.
He is also a “car guy” and has some wicked awesome true life stories to relate.
One would be hard pressed to find a more ethical, competent or decent human being in any profession.
I really wish he’d write the occasional piece for TTAC and may ask him to think about it now that I’M thinking about it.
I may give him a call.
Nice article. I too would be broken up about a free car but not so much that particular one.
The ML is a good looking car now! Just not in that color (though normally I like white).
Welcome!
And here I thought that all of the fun had left TTAC.
Oh the joys of Demos.
My guess this crowd has more than a few stories they could share, I know I do.
Good luck, and with your financial background if you have any insights as to how a freelance car guy can make an honest living, without selling out too much, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Cheers
Larry
I grew up in a household that ran a large buy here pay here in St. Louis.
My stepfather was a salesman (lol). My mother ran the office.
My sister also worked in the office.
Hell, I had my fist job there. And many an afternoon there after school, “playing” and tinkering with various cars on the lot and inside the meager showroom, is the reasoning behind my disease, my passion for cars.
As for demos, my family had plenty. 86 Grand Am, candy apple red with candy apple red wheels. Yup. Dodge Omnis. Dynastys (-ies?). Late 70’s Chevy Nova. Drop top K car.
MB 240D, chocolate brown with caramel interior, standard transmission. That car was a demo then purchased by my folks. God, I loved that car, as much as a kid who loved cars possibly could.
Eagle Premier, which was actually BOUGHT by folks, and consequently turned out to be a hellacious nightmare. Ugh.
Demos are the reasons that I still, to this day, reconsider my career options.
Testing, testing.
(Last two comments were not posted. I was starting to think TTAC didn’t like me. *sniff *sniff)
EDIT: Yup, my lengthy comments aren’t posting. For shame.
There’s something up with the spam filter. I rescued 25 comments from it yesterday evening alone. My apologies for this issue.
Hey, you’ve raised one of mine from the dead :)
If you see two others just like it, please leave them there. Lol. Nothin’ like repeating messages, over and over.
Thanks.
Maybe something to do with the – hopefully – missing “r” in the adjective modifying your job?
Awesome, looking forward to more articles.
I also gave up a job where I had a company car-I was a regional fleet manager for a car rental company and had use of one for 10 years. The fun part was I had to swap my ride out every week. Well kinda fun-I got stuck driving some stripped out base models/15 passenger vans from time to time, but most of the time I drove normal run of the mill SUV’s and stuff.
But it was nice to be able to take a truck/an Escalade/a Mustang etc whenever I wanted one.
It was also nice to know I had a secure reliable car-so I always had a fun personal car as a side project. Well nothing too fun-I did a few lifted Cherokees/Wranglers.
Now I sell cars at a dealership that is one of the few that still has a demo program. So nice not paying for gas/insurance etc. And I have another Cherokee (XJ) in the garage awaiting a lift kit and some other mods.
I was raised in a household which ran a large used, buy-here, pay-here in St. Louis.
My stepfather sold cars. My mother, and my sister, both worked in the office. Hell, I was a porter there for my first job.
And I could add numerous chapters to the big book of Experiences with Demos.
What kind of demos did we have?
Hmmm…
*86 Grand Am SE, burgundy with burgundy wheels. Yup.
*rag top K Car
*Dodge Omni
*Dynasty
*Toyota Corolla (the same ones which were Chevy Novas interchangeably)
*85 Pontiac Firebird in one copper color (custom?) which, when hand dried, left a gift on the dry towel, leaving the same color of the paint on the towel :)
We even bought a couple of them there demos from the lot, as follows:
Eagle Premier. Charcoal over burgundy. We should have left it as a demo and moved on. A nightmarish experience, it was.
MB 240D. Chocolate Brown over tan leather. Had those color matched wheel covers. Stick shift. I loved that car like a kid loves his puppy. Rode like a tank.
Ahhhh. Fun times.
The demo is the very reason- and ONLY reason- I still reconsider my career today.
Cheers, kids.
Don’t know where my other comment went, but after typing I clicked on the Amazon link. Seems like an interesting book-but for $350 I’ll pass! I realize its probably out of print or something.
Go to ebay….
Or Half Price Books
HPB.com
We had a houseful of demos from when I was about 3 until I was about 19. Lol
Hell my family even bought a couple of them after “demoing” (?) them. Demos turned purchase were:
MB 240 D, Chocolate Brown over tan leather wit the color matched wheel covers. Stick shift. GREAT car.
Eagle Premier, charcoal over burgundy. A dreadful, horrible car.
Honorable mention:
86 Grand Am SE, burgundy with burgundy wheels (Yup)
85 Firebird, in a copper orange color (custom?) which, after giving a hand wash and dry, would leave a nice parting gift of same colored paint on the dry towel. Lol
The Premier was one of the interesting cars I wanted to hear about!
Edit: I didn’t realize the Premier and Monaco were saddled with the awful PRV V6 which ruined other cars like the Saab 9000 and the DeLorean.
It ran well for every bit of 3 months.
Engine blew at around 60k.
Pissed parents, pursued charges… but withdrew them. Can you- rather, would you- really sue your whole immediate family’s employer?
Meh.
They were AMC employees?!
Lol.
No, no… not AMC employees.
Just worked for a large buy here/pay here. They had the car financed and were about three or so months into it when the damned thing gave.
I think the owner gave them something (money wise) for it, but they still owed on the Premier.
They took the loss and just kept working there at the lot.
SMH.
The Mercedes was a more interesting story. Some pump blew on it which would have cost around 2k or so. They cried foul, but already purchased the Benz.
They ended up GIVING- yes, giving, free and clear- the clean 240D to our very rural neighbor from Arkansas. He kept it in his garage for about two years or so, then had it hauled off. He was supposed to “get it running”, but that never happened.
Fun times with my working class folks in St. Louis. Fun times.
Oh your prior posts with the more detailed explanation have now showed up!
I saw you said they had a Dynasty as well. I have family experience with that car, pretty much a piece o junk. Stranded us more than once.
Then again, so have the Chrysler vans my mom got afterward, but she just kept buying them.
I still to this day see a few Dodge, Plymouth, or Chrysler van from the 80’s rolling around with white smoke pouring out of the tailpipe.
They must have sold a crap load of those things. Good God.
And yes, I get to wear the guy who makes the same post repeatedly crown today. It’s all good. Lol
@CoreyDL–A Dynasty? My friend had to be rescued from his when it caught fire and he passed out from exhaust and smoke inhalation. I still shudder whenever I see one…
“I still to this day see a few Dodge, Plymouth, or Chrysler van from the 80′s rolling around with white smoke pouring out of the tailpipe.”
Ah yes, equipped with the Mitsubishi 3.smoke V6 no doubt.
@CoreyDL
The Saab 9000 never had a PRV. The Saab V6 was a GM product, same engine used in the Catera. Not bad engines, they just had a silly short timing belt change interval with no margin for error. And they did not really make as much power as the Saab Turbos, which were a lot more bulletproof, and cheaper.
PRV = Peugeot, Renault, Volvo. Though ultimately, while the block was shared by the three companies, the heads were not. The Volvo head was a disaster, major cam oiling issues until they came out with the 2.8l version and sorted it out. That was also the version Delorean bought, and it was actually fine, if not overly powerful. The 3.0L Renault version was pretty OK as well, it was the cars they were bolted into that sucked, other than the Espace and sundry Alpine-Renaults. The Peugeot version was bulletproof, and as it had balance shafts in the heads where the other versions did not, it was smooth as a baby’s buttocks. It was also the most powerful of the three, I believe. Not counting the rare turbo Renault versions, of course.
Thanks. I was thinking that because the 9000 was on that joint platform with the Thema and _______ something else.
Mmm Renault Alpine! Goes right on the list with the Atlantique.
Peugeot had very stylish cars in those early 90s, which have aged very gracefully. I particularly liked a loaded one I saw in an old TG review by Chris Goffey.
Lancia Thema, Fiat Chroma, and Alfa Romeo 164.
Most of Peugeot’s production from the mid-60s to the mid-90s was styled by Pininfarina – those guys could not draw a bad line if they tried. If only the great styling houses could come back, we could possibly be saved from the sea of ugly we currently live in. I am sure Ferrari’s current output has Batista Farina spinning in grave like F1 engine.
Question: is Jurgen Schrempp regarded with as much disdain within Mercedes as he is out of it?
Pretty much!
Nice! I hope to one day meet this esteemed TTAC writer and get my copy of his book autographed by The Man Himself!
Welcome!
Welcome to the loony bin, Steve. :-)
Hi, welcome, so your ML350 has the lighted star which is like a $400 option, if I’m not mistaken. Should you ever land in a Ford they sell lighted Ford emblems on ebay for $20. Love the Jeep you had, I had 2002 HO Limited just like it in black, great vehicle. It could crawl, climb or zoom past anything but a gas station. Look forward to reading more from your perspective
My wife and I own an ’11 GLK350 (4MATIC), but she really wanted this GL550 we gave a gander.
It was silver over gray leather. She flipped over the Indiglo-Blue illuminated “Mercedes-Benz” door sills. They wanted $20K for it and it had 87K miles on it.
Told her it would be ridiculous to spend that much on a vehicle with that many miles. She cried about not getting it for a week. But she likes the GLK. And it had less than half that many miles.
And I concur, those illuminated emblems are on Ebay all day for $20-ish dollars. Just hide the wires, and there you go.
Gotta Look Kardashian.
Bling!
GLK’s not bad at all, dare I say, pretty good (albeit a porkchop, tippin’ the scales).
The 3.5L, found in the much pricier E-Class, is glorious. I can get 25 MPG highway with 93 octane, higher than its EPA-rated 23.
Above average reliability and… *and*… made in Germany, not by them boys down in Tuscaloosa County, Alabammy. (No disrespect to the south.)
I do wish I’d have stumbled across a GLK250 Bluetec. But I’ve only seen ONE to date.
No way I’d spend over 20K on a Benz with that many miles. Scary stuff. Lest its a Land Cruiser, then I’m much more comfortable.
The three D’s in my day were “a demo, a draw, and a day off”.
Some higher up employees at the car dealerships actually deny letting people know their demo is also a car which is for sale.
That’s when you’re high up on the ladder, baby.
“Oh, I like this Range Rover”.
“Nope. That one’s not for sale. That’s the boss’s car”.
“It has dealer plates?”
“Not for sale. I could ask him…. but nope. Not for sale.”
Or the cute 19 year old girl in the office that the owner has a crush on. Try getting the keys to test drive her VW demo. Lol. Won’t happen.
My last free Mercedes Benz was a ’66 220 SE my brother gave me in 1980. Grand old thing.
At the apponted hour, it wouldn’t start, so we phoned the junkyard and called the whole thing off.
Welcome, Mr. Lynch.
Seriously bending a company car with some reckless, chemically impaired driving? And working the system to cover it up? Putting it all on the interweb? I hope the statute of limitations has expired on that one.
Welcome. I for one DO want to hear about the Mercedes and Hondas. I’ve seen people give up on CPO S-Class cars due to reliability issues at 80k miles and some swear off Hondas forever. I don’t believe hype and since you have extensive history with both of these makes, would love to hear the good, bad and the ugly with Mercedes and Honda. So fire away.
How did you make a great living as a freelance writer?
Most journos would love to have your lifestyle.