8:40 am, October 30, 2022
Long-term readers of this column may remember my apprentice, Jason, who was regularly lampooned here back when he was a lad.
Having learnt his trade from the master, he went on to become a very successful salesman.
Jason now lives in an extremely nice apartment in Solihull, drives a Range Rover and flogs finance products for a living, earning a far more handsome commission than he ever got off nine-year-old Vauxhall Vectras and Ford Mondeos out of a back-street car lot.
He was – and still is – a nice lad, so fair play to him, even if he probably still doesn’t know how to tie his shoelaces or get out of bed in time for work.
Anyway, I bumped into him last week in the Queen’s Arms after I popped in for a sundowner before heading home to do my accounts.
He was out with a couple of old mates from over the west side of Brum, and as soon as he saw me he bought me a pint and a whisky chaser, meaning I had to leave the car at the pub and get the bus home. Oh well, never mind.
We had a good chat about the old days and some of the mischief we got up to, and then he recounted a tale to his mates about what has to be the crowning glory among my failed attempts to sell a car.
You know when you go fishing and you have the fish on the hook but for some strange reason you fling it back into the water? Well, here we go…
It would have been around 2005/2006, and I had a late-1970s Mercedes-Benz S-Class – one of the last of the massively over-engineered big old barges with a V8 under the bonnet.
It was a bit down at heel but cleaned up okay and looked great in the photos.
I tried to sell it a few times but never really had much of a bite, so it took up residence in Poo Corner – the part of my lot where I store the part-exes, no-hopers and restoration projects that I’ll get around to ‘one day’.
What I didn’t realise was that I’d still left one of the adverts live – something I found out the hard way when I got a phone call at 8am on a Thursday from a chap down in Exeter.
‘I’d like to buy your Mercedes,’ said a Devonian voice on the end of the phone.
‘I’m happy with the pictures, it’s the right colour, so if you don’t mind collecting me from Birmingham New Street I’ll be there about 4.30pm.’
Never one to pass up a sale, I agreed the deal on the phone and called up a gentleman who knew a gentleman who would make sure it had an MOT certificate by 4.30pm.
With that side of things in hand, I dropped Jason a text message, as that morning I was up at the car auctions in Walsall and had to entrust such duties to the apprentice.
It read: ‘J – urgent favour. Can you slap a used battery on the Merc S-Class and chuck a bucket over it, slosh a gallon of petrol in the tank and take the old knacker for a couple of laps round the block to free up the brakes. Got some sucker coming by train, wants me to pick him up at 4.30.’
I got back to work just after lunchtime and was rather enraged to see that the S-Class was still sitting under a tree, covered in bird mess and tree sap and sporting two flat tyres.
Jason was in the office, playing solitaire on the work computer and sending rude text messages to his girlfriend.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ I raged.
‘The Merc still looks like it should be in the scrapyard and the bloke’s arriving from Devon in a couple of hours. Get out there and get the ****ing thing ready like I asked you to.’
Jason looked at me with an expression of genuine puzzlement.
‘What do you mean, boss?’
‘I sent you a text message when I was at the auction.’
Just before I launched into a full-on rage, though, my phone beeped. It was a text from the buyer and it read: ‘Good job I bought a return ticket. Sounds like I dodged a bullet there.’
Yes, in my haste to sell the blinking thing, I’d managed to send my text not to Jason but to the poor, unsuspecting customer who was already on the train from Exeter St Davids…
As for the Merc, it’s still there, under the same tree, all these years on.
Perhaps I should chuck a bucket over it, pump up the tyres and try to sell it again – this time as a barn-find classic.
This column appears in the current edition of Car Dealer – issue 176 – along with news, reviews, interviews, features and much more! Click here to read and download it for free!
