9:00 am, August 30, 2022
A couple of weeks ago, I was out doing the weekly grocery shop when I bumped into a bloke I didn’t recognise but who knew instantly who I was.
His name was Paul, and he pointed out that last time we’d been together he was neither bald nor fat (unlike me), and that I had, in fact, once been his boss.
Awkward moment dispensed with, it all came flooding back.
He’d worked for me when I was the senior sales and service manager at a Fiat and Alfa Romeo main agent in the early Nineties, not long before I set up on my own.
Back then, he was a service assistant, or in main dealership terms basically a whipping boy, whose job it was to do any or all of the things that nobody else wanted to.
Our regional manager at the time was a complete t**d.
Nobody liked him and he made himself especially unpopular with senior dealership staff by setting us unrealistic targets on sales volumes, service revenues and keeping warranty costs to a minimum.
Indeed, he’s the reason I jacked in main dealer life altogether, leaving him with nine beige Fiat Cromas in group stock as a final hurrah.
That wasn’t the first time I got even, though.
Before that – it would have been about 1991 – I played him at his own game and, to this day, Paul was the only other person who knew about it.
A Fiat Croma similar to the ones Big Mike ordered to spite a nasty regional manager just before he left main dealer life
But by reminding me in Asda, he no longer is, as it’s too good to keep secret any longer.
Anyway, the regional manager arrived for his monthly visit/snoop around the day after I’d received his latest fax (remember those pre-email days where you had to rely on a roll of paper and a phone line to send a stroppy missive?) and he’d put my nose pretty much out of joint over warranty claim costs.
So when I saw him turn up, I was overcome by a really evil idea.
His car was an Alfa Romeo 164 V6 Lusso in bright Alfa Red – the very same colour as our demonstrator, which was parked in the front row of our used forecourt in the hope that some Alfa-lover would fall for it and save us too much of a car-crash on the residual value.
When I saw that his car had the very same black leather interior as well, I hatched a wicked, wicked plan…
No sooner had he arrived and disappeared into the back office to tear our dealer principal a new one (not that he’d done anything wrong; that was just the type of person the regional manager was), I summoned Paul out from the parts store to go and get the 164 demo off the forecourt.
Between us, we then hastily swapped the regional manager’s possessions from his own car to the demo (his tape cassettes, Ray-Bans, cigarettes, tube of mints and – yeuch – packet of condoms), being careful to put them all in exactly the same place as in his own motor.
We then went to even greater detail, carefully swapping over the number plates, head office tax disc holder and fag-burnt floor mat to ensure it was absolutely identical to the car he’d parked there less than an hour earlier.
Paul then took the regional manager’s 164 and parked it neatly in row one, complete with our £15,995 pricing plaque in the screen, leaving the demo in its place.
When the meeting was over, the dealer principal was visibly purple with rage and our favourite head office visitor waddled down to ‘his’ 164, climbed in, lit a smoke, popped his Ray-Bans on and went to start the car – only to find that the ignition key just jammed in the lock.
It wouldn’t turn at all.
A dealer principal’s meeting with a widely disliked regional manager left him purple with rage
He tried locking and unlocking it via the remote button (at which point I almost soiled myself, because if he’d looked to his left he’d have seen a red 164 flashing its four-ways at him among our used stock), got back in and failed to start it again.
Rather than inquire politely at the service desk, he got back out of the car and called me (or ‘You there’) over to have a look at it.
Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t turn the key in the ignition either, so I summoned Paul out to have a look as well.
He was the perfect act, not only keeping a deadpan expression but also going ‘Oh for f***’s sake, not this problem again’ without a single prompt.
I followed this by explaining to the regional manager that we’d seen a few Alfas with the same issue and that the only cure was most likely a new lock set and central locking ECU.
Half an hour later, he was on his way back to head office (a good 160 miles away) in a Fiat Panda 750L, our least powerful and most miserable courtesy car, while I was ordering up a new lock set and central locking ECU – as well as logging seven hours of labour – as a warranty claim.
A handy little two grand towards next month’s revenue target for a repair we wouldn’t have to carry out.
Illegal? Yes. Immoral? I’ll let you lot decide. Besides, we valeted it for him before he picked it up…
This feature appears in the current edition of Car Dealer – issue 174 – along with news, views, reviews and much, much more! Click here to read and download it for free!
