Have you ever heard roadtest "not allowed?"

I went to look at 2 cars I was interested in at a non-dealer high volume place. They had a 456MGT and a DB7, 2 cars I wanted to compare....
I was allowed to sit in the cars, kick the tires, but drove away without an offer for a roadtest (I didn't come out and force the issue at the time, because I wasn't prepared to buy immediately and I had the feeling I would be "bothering" them). Later the salesman contacted me to ask if I had thought more about the cars, and I told him I was pissed I had driven nearly 2 hours to visit their shop and wasn't offfered a drive...he (and the owner) told me that their insurance won't allow test drives......have you ever heard of such a thing?

 

Nope - often I've had to let the sales guy drive me off the lot (apparently because it reduces their insurance costs) but I've never not been allowed to go for a test drive. Sounds fishy on their part - maybe they didn't consider you a serious buyer for whatever reason?

 

Places that get a lot of window shoppers often won't permit a test drive until you've talked money. They're there to sell cars, not to give people an "experience".

When they first came out, most dealers didn't permit test drives in either the EVO or the STi: lots of tire kickers, and huge demand.

And when the cars have a high demand, the dealer doesn't have to offer a test drive to sell them to somebody.

 

Forget that Im not going to pay for a car like that with out test driving it.
No test drive, no business.

 

I see your point, but this was a 456MGT and a 2000 DB7. I made it clear I was serious, showed them my 40th anniv ed 911 (which the didn't seem remotely interested in ), and pointed out that while living in NC the year prior I bought 7 cars in 1 year from Foreign Cars Italia. I just wonder if there still isn't a bit of arrogance on the part of these sales people; they sometimes seem to act as though we should feel privileged just to be in their establishments. Maybe I'm overreacting, I don't know.

When the owner contacted me 2 weeks later to follow up on me being irritated (he is the one that made up the bull about the insurance company), I informed him that I went somewhere elase and already traded the 911....their loss.

 

I disagree. A good salesman should be selling a person the experience. Without the experience, Ferrari is just another sportscar. The salesman saw he had a interest and with a 40th ann. 911 could figure out he at least has some kind money. This wasn't some punk kid or guy just shooting **** with them in the show room, he displayed a serious interest in purchasing a car. And I can understand the insurance aspect, but IMO this just exposes how cheap they are. He could have offered him a ride at least if he was a serious buyer.

But you summed it up perfectly... No drive, no business...I'd have the same attitude.

I sell multimillion dollar healthcare software for a living...red carpet treatment for ALL clients.

 

Thats retarded, they need new insurance, no way I am putting out $ for a car like that w/o a test drive

 

Let me get this straight.............you're upset that your insufficiently inflated ego wasn't puffed up by the salesman because he didn't offer you a test drive.......and you said you didn't ask for one because you were not ready to buy at the time ? Yet you drove two hours to get there........did you make an appointment for that visit and have prior conversations regarding your intentions.......or was it a casual visit because you were there for some other reason as well ?

But you would have been quite happy to drop in unannounced and utilize an hour or two of a salesmans time driving cars you were not ready to buy. I don't offer test drives to "walk ins".......never.......if you want one you have to ask.......and then I am going to qualify you before we go for a drive. Having said that, I've also given people test drives when they have said upfront that they had no money, or intention to buy, or "insert reason here"....or whatever, but wanted the experience. BTW.......that knock on the door you'll be getting tonight at 10:00 PM.......it's me.......I'll need to borrow your new car for an hour....hope you don't mind.

Either way you are wrong............you didn't let them know you were real and set up the agenda of the meeting appropriately in advance..........or you have a totally unrealistic expectation of how our job works.

At the time of the events in question, you did not obviously come across as a real buyer....and at the time....they were correct in their assumption. The fact that you bought something else, somewhere else, after the fact, is totally irrelevant...........it happens to ALL OF US every day..........and they would have, or will, sell the car you were looking at to someone else at some point as well.

The insurance not allowing test drives is bogus IMHO.........that is why we dealers have insurance, unless I am totally out of touch with underwriting requirements as they pertain to the US market, as I am a Canadian dealer.

 

The point is that some people will buy without a test drive.
When there enough sheep around, trying to get wool from a wolf isn't worth the effort.

Alas, for most buyers, all the test drive is selling is just "the experience".

How much about the mechanical condition of a car can you tell from a drive? Not how much Schumi can tell -- how much can you tell? How much can your neighbor tell? This may be one of the reasons why there are few American drivers in F1.

Be honest with yourself: How long would a shady shop stay in business if the drivers knew that the car didn't have warped rotors from the brake feel? Yet timing belts and rotors are the most common rip-offs in the service business.

Would you take a test drive as an alternative to a PPI?

But if you feel that you really need to check a car with a test drive, and you can't get one, then mark everything you'd check for as "failed", and scale your counter-offer based on a presumed test drive where everything had come up buggers.

And tell them exactly what you're counting off. Then it's in their interest to allow a test drive.

Many car salesmen aren't all that familiar with cars in general. When I was shopping for the 328, the sales geek kept trying to tell me how "fast" it was. When he looked into the parking lot, he saw a Toyota, not a turbocharged WRC homologation.

(One thing that impressed me about the dealership that sold me the EVO is that the salesman knew was a Celica AllTrac was. -- That, and the P356 and various sports and race cars in the service bays: Not your ordinary Mitsu dealership.
(Oddly enough, one of the few Mitsu houses that allowed test drives was a dealership I wouldn't even trust to do dealer prep right (a number of Mitsu dealers forgot to remove the shipping spring blocks).
(And, frankly, a test drive on a new EVO doesn't really give a good indication of the machine -- the tires still have release compound, the brake pads aren't seated: the car is much better after 600 miles than when it sits on the showroom floor.)

 

I personally have worked in an exotic car showroom, and you cannot possibly offer a road test to everyone that seems interested. When you have the level of exotic that your refering to, you should be prepared for some money talk before expecting to even turn the key. Most expensive real estate requires a prequal letter before you can even make an offer, while a tract home you can tour a model, it's very similiar.

 

If can be extremely difficult to OBTAIN and MAINTAIN insurance in an exotic car dealership. Remember the F50 that was stolen on a test drive? Exotic car dealers have to be very cautious. Don't personalize it.

 

I can understand exotic car dealers not allowing test drives unless of course money is talked about. But here locally-buying "normal" cars (under/around 60k) my family has been allowed to take them home for the weekend (after talking seriously about purchasing)

 

bit the 456 & DB7 are not exactly super expensive exotics, both are well under $100k these days

if it was a Porsche CGT or a 430 that "might" make it more reasonable, even though I still wouldnt shell out my $ w/0 a test drive

 

Hey, William. Did I let you T.D. your TR before you bot it? Probably not!!!!

 

Well, it's not like you're going to disappear into the crowd.

 

Bingo.

Some established customers get the keys to the store. Walk ins that no one knows get politely shown around. A good salesman can size up clients pretty well and you admitted you were not ready to buy. He made a good call. If an exotic dealership gave everyone who showed up in a nice car a test drive people would be lined up around the block 24/7 waiting their turn.

I have been to Ferrari and Rolls dealers in Europe where they never unlocked the door for me to enter. I wasn't upset, They knew I wasn't a buyer and didn't want me wasting their time. At least here you get let in.

The really serious clients never show up any way. They make a call, send a check and we would send a truck with the car. If the client didn't like the car, we sent a truck for the car and returned the check. No questions asked.

In my shop now and in dealers I have worked, many of the best clients have never set foot on the property.

 

Wow, well....I'm not sure what I did to deserve that vitriolic rebuke, especially given that you don't know me from Adam.
For the record, I did call ahead of time to make sure both cars were present so that I could compare them directly given that I was going to be driving 2 hours. I pointed out that I was having a hard time deciding between these 2 cars for my next purchase given their very different attributes (DB7 is gorgeous daily driver but little room, 456 a Ferrari I can stick my kids in). I pulled up in my 911, not a cheap poser car to be sure. I pointed out to the guy during our conversation I had purchased 7 cars from a different dealer in a different state before moving here (should be an indicator of a "foolish car nut"). Parenthetically, you are absolutely wrong about "lot traffic." My first Porsche was purchased when I ambled onto Foreign Cars Italia's lot in Greensboro, while waiting for my wife's volvo to be serviced a few doors down...struck up a conversation with the sales guy and roadtested a sweet '97 993 arena red cabriolet....which i bought a few days later....I then went on to buy numerous cars from the same guy. He saw I was nibbling, and he sank the hook, and did it all professionally.
When "kicking the tires" in the 456/DB7 experience I could see the salesguy was disinterested and so rather than seem like a nuissance (and waste his time) I decided not to push the issue then and there. In fact I left being quite friendly, but saying to myself I wouldn't return. It was after receiving numerous emails from the sales guy asking about my interest that I pointed out to him that if he wanted to treat me as a real customer (which I was) he should have taken the time to "sink the hook" and offer a ride so that I could compare. Had he done that no doubt I would have made a decision to buy one of his cars. Instead he countered by saying his insurance won't allow test drives, and the owner followed up with a similar argument. I contacted my sales guy from Foreign Cars Italia to see if that was a possibility and he just laughed.
Sorry for the long-winded response...but don't make assumptions about my "overinflated ego".....you don't know me at all. In fact if I had an overinflated ego I proabbaly would have insisted on a testdrive that day wasting the slaes guy's time because he would have meant nothing to me, instead I didn't want to bother him much and take his time because I was still in my formative stage of purchasing. He lost my business. You sell cars, and you would lose my business too (you obviously have some level of disdain for your customer).

 

which 911 do you have ?

 

i just went thru this over an older Lambo at a dealer.

i say pass. no test drive . no offer to buy .

 

Had...2004 40th anniv ed, also have had C4S, C2, 993...love Porsches, beautifully built and playful to drive. they lack that Ferrari magic however.

 

No somebody else Test drove it for me

 

Looks like you took it personally ... and rightfully so.
I have a hard time with dealer/people giving you attitude and telling how you should buy from them and that if you don't because they treat you like crap, it's because you were a loser anyways.

 

This is FerrariChat, right? Ferraris are different. Anyone on the planet knows that. A cheap Ferrari is still more interesting than an expensive BMW or Mercedes. The dealership experience is different. The feeling you get driving one is different. And to top it all off, there are really very few Ferraris of any description available for sale on any given day in the US, compared to say Lexus or Mercedes.
Why would you expect Lexus dealer treatment when shopping for a Ferrari. I would hazard a guess and say that over 90% of Ferraris are bought without being test driven. You have a very good idea of what you are getting when you buy a Ferrari, and most of what that is, is mental not physical.
Ferrari dealers (including used car dealers) probably get 100 times the lookie loos that any other regular car dealer gets. That contributes to the "hands -off" treatment in most cases. You really need to establish your credibility if you want to test drive these cars. How you do that varies from dealer to dealer, but if you are unknown to the dealership the chances are you are out of luck for a casual drive without making a firm financial commitment that will result in you being laible to buy something from the dealer.
I'm not a dealer, but I've been around expensive cars all my adult life and nothing has changed with regard to a dealer commiting time, effort and energy to what is 99.9% sure to be a no-sale.

 

There's a difference between snobby "attitude" and being cautious.

Exotic car dealers get a huge volume of window shoppers. You have to take into account the number of non-buyers they see every day. Does that bias them against walk-ins? Of course it does. You can complain about human nature, but it'll still be there afterwards.

And wait until you get a real case of attitude. I had one salesman who couldn't be bothered to get the keys so I could adjust the (electric) seats on a VR4 in the showroom, to see if I'd fit. So a "test drive" wasn't an issue.

I'm something of an impulse buyer. I bought my Ferrari as a "walk-in", but I wasn't at all surprised that I didn't get a test drive until after we had talked money: I gave him an offer based on a poor car, we talked about a figure if the car handled correctly, then went out to see.


And, really, most people could sit in a car and make "vroom vroom" noises and learn as much as a test drive would tell them.

After one wheel bearing service, I took the Celica back after five minutes, and told them it was "knock-kneed and pigeon toed". After some argument, they put it back on the Hunter machine: the toe-in adjustment had been cranked all the way down, and it had too much neg camber.

The service manager asked how I knew. I told him I had driven it. He looked at me like I had said I "used The Force".

Besides: judging from traffic, about 99% of American drivers have "overinfated egos".

... and under-inflated tires. I'm astounded at the number of half flat tires in the DC area. Doesn't the handling tell them anything? (even if they can't be bothered to look at the tires.)

 

You guys really sound like a bunch of lemmings. Sorry. It is your fault if you put up with that kind of crap when slapping down your cash. Period. You buy something expensive, you have a right to properly shop for it. A great deal can be learned about a car from driving it, if you need me to explain that to you, well, then, why do you have nice cars in the first place? My point about the shopping experience was trying to decide between two different cars, neither of which are that exclusive, and the only way to do that is spend a little time with each. Driving a car is surely part of judging it, don't you agree? Your points are so ridiculous I'm not even sure how to correctly and adequately dismiss them. You buy a nice house, you want to walk through it don't you? Imagine a realtor telling you they can't be bothered to show you the property before you lay down a couple of million...I'd love to have you as my client! And then you can brag about that too...."this realtor when buying my $8m home actaully spat on me and told me only a poor person would want to look at the kitchen before buying, I bought it anyway just to show him I didn't care...." This is part of the problem with purchasing nice cars, people that have too much cash and too little expectation for service, an odd situation to be sure.
By the way, I too have purchased a number of nice cars, and plan to do so again as the years go by. In each instance I was able to actually, god forbid, drive the car first, I certainly expect to have the opportunity with each future purchase. Stop acting like because we can afford such cars it is "beneath us" to comparison shop, and expect to be treated as intelligent consumers. By the way, 456s and DB7s sit on dealer lots, waiting to be moved, using up available cash week in and week out....they need to be "sold."