Hammer Time: Vandalism

The fellow had spent nearly three hours on the road. Just to drive a 10 year old Isuzu SUV. Traffic cones. Construction. Stalls and accidents. By the time he got to my lot he was already emotionally spent, and it was only 10:00 A.M. Then he saw it. The front passenger tire was flatter than a Ford Festiva going through the crusher. I was at the bank when he called. Hadn't even opened the lot yet. Finally when I got there I noticed that an old Lincoln Mark VIII had two tires flat as well. It wasn't a coincidence. Last Friday I had authorized my first repossession of the year. All the usual things were done to avoid this step. Plenty of calls. Plenty of broken promises. Finally, one broken promise too many meant that I would get my vehicle back. It was done within a matter of hours. Except the hour in question was 4:00 AM and the person in question had just got out of jail. More times than not, I regret financing someone else's kid… or grandkid. It never works out no matter the goodwill of the guardian in question. The usual scenario goes like this. Young fellow is cleaned up enough to look presentable. The parent/grandparent/uncle/aunt is sick and tired of driving the fellow around, or worse, having them abuse their vehicle on a regular basis. They come to my lot on the hope that I will let their entitled progeny abuse one of my cars. I say no… and that is usually it. Except when it comes to certain vehicles I have which can take abuse and aren't worth all that much. A 1995 Lincoln Town Car that had already been repo'd once fit the bill perfectly. Nobody wants a 17 year old, full-sized V8 car with 175k  that was designed with a ruler. More times than not an old Panther like this will be financed to someone's kid. I have the parent or guardian co-sign on the vehicle. The payments must be directly deposited, and if the insurance is dropped or changed, they get my voice on their phone. Sometimes you can have the parent make the deposits. Other times it's the kid. The parents desperately want to teach the kid responsibility. But in real life the deal usually is doomed from the start. Drugs, alcohol, laziness, stupidity, sass and self-destructive behavior invariably lead to several missed payments after five to seven months. The guy had missed eight weekly payments at this point. A phone that only worked when I dialed it from another number, and every excuse in the world when I had our all too brief conversations. Sometimes a repo can snap someone back to the reality of paying for what is not yet their own. But when they are on drugs… forget it. You will only get a long list of excuses until you get back your car, and maybe one or two calls from the parent or guardian explaining how it will never happen again. They're right. It won't. When I got to the lot I saw the damage. I explained to the customer what took place. We worked together on putting the full-sized spare on the car. He drove it. Liked it. Paid for it. To be frank, I was almost misty eyed to deal with such nice folks after having my property violated. It was the third time in four years my property got hit (having a pawn shop adjacent to my lot doesn't help) and dealing with genuinely nice and helpful souls is what makes any career worth doing. I still had to repair the damage on the Mark VIII. So i turned off the air suspension. Put two jack stands onto the tires that needed to be removed, and went down the street to a used tire place owned by a fellow named Miles who is from Cameroon. I bought 2 Michelin Harmony's with about 50% tread on them for $80. Went back to the lot, and three other cars with customers were waiting there for me. One helped me put the tires back on while the other two went on test drives. The first financed a Saturn. The second financed a Buick the next day, and the other fellow who helped me with the tires is waiting for me to find a true contradiction in terms. A good old Saab. I used to get into a near 'Falling Down' state of mind whenever someone had violated my property. It happened two other times. Though I'm pretty sure neither one involved a customer.  The first time they took a couple of crappy aftermarket CD players and probably did me a favor. The second time they stole a Chinese scooter from a storage unit I had in the back and… did me an even bigger favor. This time it wasn't a favor. It was a moment that made me think of Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction talking about someone who had keyed his old 1964 Chevy Malibu. "Boy, I wish I could've caught him doing it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It'd been worth him doing it just so I could've caught him doing it." Click here to view the embedded video. Go to 2:13 for the Vincent Vega moment. Well, I didn't catch him doing it. But at this point in my life I wouldn't want to catch him. I have too much to lose and nothing to gain from random acts of bullshit machismo. I'll leave that to the movies. How about you though? Did anyone ever vandalize your car? If so, did you have the chance to make your feelings known?         from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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