I really, really wanted to buy from GM. Really.

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With General Motors’ troubles very much in the news these days, I thought readers might be interested in my attempt to purchase one of their products. Just a few weeks ago, I was ready to buy a GM car.

My heart was pretty close to set on a Pontiac G8. That honkin’ V-8, rear-wheel drive and GM employee pricing seemed to me a winning combination. I believe the cars were selling for a bit less than $27,000 at the time. The lack of a manual transmission nearly made me cross it off my list, but I figured I wouldn’t have been shifting much anyway with all that torque, and the utility of four doors offset the downsides. It seemed like the perfect car for me, a family guy who resides in Pasadena but lives on Glendora Mountain Road.

So here I was, one of those rare consumers who really, really wanted to buy a GM muscle car when gas was $4 a gallon. I’d tolerate its 15-mpg EPA city mileage for 361 horsepower. I showed up at a Pontiac dealer just before 5 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon with a friend. A guy came out and said, ‘We’re closed.’

I thought he was joking, and laughed it off. GM sales had been down about 16% in September compared to the same month a year ago, and there was industry talk about dropping Pontiac as a brand altogether, so I figured dealers would be hungry. I wanted to test drive a G8, I said. When he asked me to ...

come again later in the week, I realized he was serious. He didn’t even hand me a business card or ask for my contact information. I’m used to asking car salesmen to back off and leave me some breathing room — this was bizarre.

A couple of minutes later, a saleswoman returned from taking another customer on a test drive. My friend asked if we could go for a drive. She reluctantly agreed to drive us around the block, but said we would not be able to drive the car. We took a quick spin, but it was pretty pointless since she was driving.

The empty dealership had an air of defeat. Later, I telephoned the salesman I had encountered that Sunday, and he confirmed my feeling. He agreed to speak frankly with me if I would not name him or the dealership.

‘Sometimes people do get a little discouraged,’ confided the salesman, who’s been selling cars for 30 years. He said he turned me away because he had somewhere to be that night and figured he wasn’t going to make a sale anyhow. ‘It used to be it was a bad weekend if you sold two, maybe three cars and everybody else sold five or six. Now the whole store will not do three cars.’

‘You wonder, will the factory survive?’ he added. He’s not the only one asking that question now. In fact, GM is clamoring for government aid to ward off its demise.

Going in, I knew there would be compromises if I were to buy a G8 — the aforementioned lack of a manual transmission and gas mileage in the teens. But I was willing to overlook those for what I saw as a compelling product. If only someone would let me drive the car.

A couple of weeks later, I was at a dealership mulling the purchase of another brand. It also was late on a Sunday afternoon, and, after some negotiations, I told the salesman I had to leave but would come back the next day.

As I walked through the parking lot, the manager chased me down and asked me to please come back inside. He told me he wanted very much to get me into a new car that day and would make a deal work. I bought the car — I’m pretty sure it was their only sale that day.

In the end, I passed up the Australian-built Pontiac for a Subaru made in Indiana.

—Peter Y. Hong