Nissan

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Yesterday I attempted to look at three cars: the Subaru Impreza, the Nissan Sentra and the Volkswagen Jetta.  The Impreza visit/test drive went fine, but the Nissan and Volkswagen dealers were part of a single, awful complex and were inable to ever actually show us a car.

First I walked into the Nissan showroom and was poking around at cars for a while.  Eventually I, and a friend, got inside the Sentra they had on display.  I poked around at it from the inside, hit the buttons and pretended I was driving.  I may have even made some VROOM VROOM noises.  We were in there for a fairly long time.   During that time people, who I can only assume were Nissan staff, ate lunch and watched me.  Nobody ever came out to ask if I needed help.  Ultimately I just walked back out of the showroom without taking a test drive.  Whoops, bad salesmanning.

Next door I walked into the Volkswagen showroom and was quickly approached by a salesman who claimed it was his first day.  At first I laughed, because I’d be warned online about the “it’s my first week” angle that car salesmen might use to get your guard down.  But then it appeared, sadly, that he wasn’t joking.  He took us out to the lot and didn’t seem to know anything about cars.  Like, literally, anything.   When asked the difference between two different models, he indicated that one had a 2.5 after its name while the other merely had a 2.0 after it’s name.  What does that number indicate, we wondered.  There was no answer forthcoming.  When it became clear that he knew literally nothing about the cars, I asked if we could just go on a test drive.  He said sure, wandered away, and then didn’t come back for twenty minutes.  We left before he got back.

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