Big Mike OUR MAN ON THE INSIDE SHARES HIS THOUGHTS ON THE CAR BUSINESS
Who is Big Mike? Well, that would be telling. What we can say is he’s had more than 40 years in the car trade so has probably forgotten more about it than we’re likely to know. 16 | CarDealerMag.co.uk
COMMENT
It’s truly eye-opening the ‘accessories’ you can find tucked away
I
recently sold a Volvo estate to a clergyman – a pillar of the local community and someone fairly well known in the area near my dealership. He’s a good customer and has had three or four cars off me over the years, so I won’t go naming him here, partly because that would be bad for business and partly because I’d probably end up getting sued, but it was (to say the least) an eye opener when I went to valet his V70 trade-in only to find some interesting items in the spare wheel well. Admittedly, the spandex outfit may simply have reflected an interest in wrestling, while the handcuffs and ball gag could have been there for protection in road-rage incidents, but nevertheless my eyebrows are still somewhere close to my bald patch as a result. The only downside of it was that, as the pubs are still closed, I wasn’t able to discuss my findings with other members of the local community for the purposes of research. I did mention it to a few of my mates in the trade, of course, and we had a very amusing discussion via WhatsApp that I encourage you to perhaps replicate on the Car Dealer Forum. After all, we’ve all found some interesting things in cars we’ve taken in part-ex or picked up at the auction and I’m sure some of you can out-trump the ball gag and spandex. One of my fellow traders, for example, recalled in our chat the time that he took a Jaguar XJ8 in PX against a newish Range Rover. The previous titled owner was a member of the House of Lords –and was also the proud owner of a dainty red suspender belt and some white stiletto heels (or was, until he chopped them in against one of Solihull’s finest), while another mate of mine, who deals in high-end performance cars, took a Mitsubishi Evo in a three-car deal with a professional footballer, who had left in the glovebox a selection of photos of him and an unidentified lady and gent presumably getting ready for bed, which would have been worth a fortune to the gutter press. Needless to say, the next time the footballer wanted to bargain him down by £20k on an Aston Martin they were slid across the desk and my mate ended up getting the full asking price plus a healthy tip… Another car trade colleague recalled a Sierra Cosworth he bought from a police auction after the car had been used in a bank job. During their search, the investigating officers hadn’t checked the bag containing the jack and wheelbrace, which yielded my friend a fistful of fifties that he spent very sparingly afterwards, lest the notes were marked. He still hasn’t told us exactly how much he made on the deal, but I do recall him buying a speedboat soon afterwards. He sold the Cossie for a tidy mark-up as well. Dodgy Dave meanwhile (and every town in Britain has a car dealer called Dodgy Dave, right?) once took a Jeep Cherokee that was chopped in rather urgently by two shifty-looking blokes in large coats, which he thought was a bit unusual given it was a hot summer’s day. But being Dave and being dodgy, he turned an eye as blind as that of his MOT tester to the rather unusual circumstances. What was more obscure, though, was the false hatch he found in the bottom of the armrest cubby, beneath which were two handguns. He immediately alerted the local constabulary with a description of the two men that turned out to be as useless as most of his forecourt stock and the Jeep was seized, never to be seen again, although a likeness of it did appear on an episode of Crimewatch six months later, being used to hold up an offlicence in Stoke-on-Trent. Dave lost about four grand on that deal, which in his terms isn’t that bad a deal – I’ve known him to take a bigger hit on cars he bought in good faith. Meanwhile, a mutual mate of ours who runs a bombsite banger lot in north Essex had an even better story. He’d bought a Peugeot 106 at a customs and excise sale, which was offloading cars that had been seized at the port of Harwich for reasons undisclosed by HMRC but patently obvious when his Jack Russell started slavering all over the radio-cassette.
The officers hadn’t checked the bag containing the jack and wheelbrace, which yielded my friend a fistful of fifties.
