[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

Lots of horror stories here, most prefaced with the word "Jenkins". Whoever Jenkins is, he surely does seem to own a lot of car dealerships!

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've never really had a bad experience. Back as a youth and young adult I bought a couple of cars from a local dealership in far Northern MN. The dealer had an interesting way of selling cars. "Just take it home over the weekend and drive it around, and come back on Monday and we'll see what we can do for you". That was the approach used on my '61 Impala and '68 Impala. I bought the car both times.

Beginning in 1995 or so my wife and I established a good relationship with a Toyota dealer in Burnsville, MN. Large dealership, many well-dressed salespeople, and one guy named Bob. Bob never seemed to be in a hurry, and never put pressure on a prospective customer; he was laid-back to the max and dressed VERY casually compared to the rest of the sales staff, but his office was lined with salesperson-of-the-year plaques so he obviously knew his stuff. We bought a total of five vehicles from Bob and he gave us a square shake on every one. One time I saw a Ford Ranger, 2 years old with less than 12,000 miles on it, advertised for $14,900.00, so I stopped in to talk to Bob about it. Unfortunately that Ranger was included in a fleet deal with a buyer who bought something like 10 used vehicles, I supposed to re-sell. I was disappointed as on paper anyway it was a deal at $14,900. Bob and I talked a bit, as he tried to interest me in a couple of other similar vehicles, then stopped and said "wait a minute", and left. When he got back to his office about 5 minutes later he said he could pull that truck out of the fleet deal and sell it to me for what the fleet operator would have gotten. $12,500.00. After a short test drive we concluded the deal.

Bob is unfortunately retired. If he wasn't I'd to to Burnsville, MN to buy from him even today.

Does not seem to be many Bobs out there.