When you were younger, what brand did you aspire to own when you "made it"? By made it, I mean, when you finally got a decent job, attained an advanced degree of independence and felt at least slightly financially secure, what brand/item etc.did you want, that signified luxury?
Post 2000, this has become an increasingly difficult question to answer. As the middle class constricted at the beginning of the 21st century, luxury goods purveyors had to adapt to continue to grow, and they did that by down-scaling their brands, some more tactfully than others. Coach purses, for example, can now be found at outlet stores. BMW introduced the 1 Series. Luxury for the masses became the theme as we wrung every last ounce of credit out of everything we "owned" before the housing market collapsed.
But I digress.
For me, the one and only brand was Infiniti. If you're old enough, you remember the commercials with Dave Brubeck's Take 5 playing in the background, with Jonathan Pryce* driving around Los Angeles in black and white (here is another ad from that campaign, set in Prague). I saw this and I was hooked.
So being a dirt poor schlub trying to hack my way on the fringes of the radio industry, this was a brand that I aspired to own. And then, after rummaging through every brand GM had to offer except Cadillac and reaching my wits end, I ran the numbers and found I finally made enough to afford one (Used. New cars are for suckers).
With this pleasant discovery, I set out to find a reasonable used Infiniti. I, much to my surprise, found not one but two at an Infiniti dealer. (Airport Infiniti in Brook Park, OH if you're keeping score at home, or on the road.) The price was right, the mileage was good, the car was great. What could possibly go wrong?
I think it's important to take a moment, before we continue, and discuss brands and expectations. Let me ask you, rhetorically, if you expect your experience in buying a car to be significantly different if you're buying a Kia versus a BMW? Or a Mitsubishi versus a Land Rover? The easy, cynical answer is "they're car dealers, they're all crooks", but the truth here once again goes back to brand, and perception of the brand. If we're being reasonable, the expectation is that a potential buyer should have a better experience at an Infiniti/Lexus/Acura/BMW/Mercedes dealer than that of a "down market" vehicle.
Let's make another admission here before we continue. We all have egalitarian goals in life, and we like to think that we benefit from this type of system. This is false. On some level, the person you expect to sell you something should fit into your image of the brand of product you're purchasing. The women selling clothes at Lane Bryant should be plus sized. The guys behind the counter at GNC should workout. Best Buy workers should be geeks with clumsy social skills, except for the guys in car audio, who should look like they were just released from jail that morning.
So when I arrived at my Infiniti dealer of choice, and walked onto the lot, out trudged the type of car salesman one would expect to see at a KIA dealership. Late 50s, morbidly obese, tie stained from lunch. I immediately think little of Harold, and it becomes evident very quickly that Harold doesn't think all that much of me.
With little resistance or effort, I ask to test drive the model I had come to see. He tosses me the key fob. I, in turn, toss the keys to my trade in (a Pontiac G6 hard top convertible, whose catalytic converters were beginning to die at the 100,000 mile mark).
I test drive the Infiniti. It is awesome. I feel like a million bucks. I feel like the way Jonathan Pryce told me I'd feel. I am so happy, I'm not even going to haggle on the price of the car.
Harold** had a sale. Easiest mark of the day. All that awaited me was a reasonable purchasing/financing experience that should be fairly smooth, because the Infiniti brand promises me a superior experience, and we're out of here in time for lunch.
But this is far too much to ask of Harold. I arrive back from my test drive to find out the car I'm test driving has been "put on hold for a customer who called in a $1,000 deposit on it." But I was welcome to test drive another used model without all wheel drive (an automatic non starter in an area that gets as much snow as mine), and blue instead of black.
Or, better yet, I could lease a new car! Infiniti would love to take my trade and lease me a car for 36 months and 12,000 miles for slightly more than my used purchase would have been on a car that, alas, is no longer available. In fact, rather than giving me the keys back to my trade in, I had the privilege of Harold trying to sell me three different leases, including a 60 month 100,000 lease that didn't even exist. I put 2,600 miles on a car, on average, per month. So the idea of a lease with this lifestyle is comical. And when that didn't work, he tried to sell me a new car.
Needless to say, what should have been a morning's worth of purchase of a brand I had admired turned into a total shit show. After an hour of being held "key hostage", my keys were returned to me (without a trade in offer), and I walked.
Miraculously, that "person" who put a "deposit" on the car I was test driving that Saturday changed their mind on Monday. I know this because Harold called me four times that Monday, and twice per day for the next nine days afterward to attempt to sell me the car I would have willingly purchased on Saturday. Needless to say, I didn't return his call.
Nor did I look to another Infiniti dealer for the Infiniti I did purchase. In fact, I've been to an Infiniti dealer exactly once, for a warranty replacement of the wood trim on the Infiniti I do own. I ended up purchasing my Infiniti from Carmax. No haggling, no bullshit. It's a business model I do endorse, because they live up to their brand. You are asked to incur a degree of risk if the car you're after isn't at the location at which you're shopping in the form of a transfer fee, but beyond that, I can't recommend them enough. The haggling process of buying a car from a dealer is unnecessary, and Infiniti, as a brand, proved to me by their actions that they can't be trusted to live up to the standards their advertising purports to set. So they've lost my direct purchasing business.
But the car. Gas mileage aside, the car, a G35x itself is a wonderful driving experience. Everything I'd hoped for. In 80k I've had to replace two front wheel bearings. There are nights when I leave work, I pop in Paul Desmond's Take Ten and I feel like the million dollars that advertising promised I would. It's a shame the buying experience was so horrible.
*Jonathan Pryce so loved the Infiniti he drove during the filming of the commercials, that as a condition of his agreeing to do the ads, Nissan kept one garaged in Los Angeles for him to drive for three years after the ad campaign ended.
**As a post script to this story, some months later I ended up on the same flight to Denver as Harold. We made eye contact once, and he waddled away from me in the airport lobby as quickly as he could.
