Car Salesman Talk of Perils, Precautions
First, Bill Nelson, used-car manager at Barish Chrysler-Plymouth, tried to calm a sales staff that was “real shook up.” Then he put into effect a buddy system requiring that a ride-along sit in the back when a salesperson takes a prospective buyer out for a demo drive.
But Nelson was still trying to make some kind of sense out of what had happened: Charles Washington, 61, a Barish salesman giving a demo ride in a 1989 Chrysler sports car Monday evening, had simply vanished, along with the car and the customer. And as of midday Thursday, police said they had no leads.
Has Heart Ailment
“Obviously, I’m concerned,” said Detective Carl Thompson of LAPD’s Wilshire division. “I would think (Washington) would have been back by now if everything was on the up and up,” that he would at least have telephoned his employer or his family. Washington’s wife, Zetha, told police her husband has a heart ailment that requires medication.
Thompson said he knew of no cases where a car salesman had met with foul play while taking a customer on a demo drive, but he recalled a case of a real estate saleswoman slain while showing a property to a client. “Unfortunately,” he said, “in this day and age a lot of things are becoming high risk that never were before.”
To Bill Nelson, it just didn’t figure. He knows Washington to be “very streetwise, a very savvy man . . . he always looks at their driver’s license. He knows whom he’s talking to. This man’s an old professional. He’d been here five or six years.”
There have been other, less troubling, incidents involving salespersons at Barish, which is in a mid-town location in the 400 block of South La Brea Avenue. A few years ago, Nelson recalled, “We had a customer take off with a salesman and leave him in the middle of Watts. Another was dumped in the desert and had to walk three miles to a telephone.”
Car salesmen “make their living by judging people,” Nelson observed. “If our salesmen have any premonition they’ve got somebody who’s not who they say they are,” they are not encouraged to take them out in the car.
Description Given
In this case, the customer was a 25- or 30-year-old blond man of medium height who had walked onto the Barish lot about 7 p.m. “Ostensibly,” Nelson said, “they were going over to show (the car to) the guy’s father, who supposedly was the manager of a bank.”
That seemed “quite feasible,” he added, noting that the dealership has an “affluent” clientele and that it is not unusual “to take cars to movie people’s houses.”
A few people who saw the man observed that “he didn’t look like he could buy a car,” Nelson said, “but neither do a lot of people in our neighborhood, and they’ll write a check for it. Some of the most affluent-looking people couldn’t buy a bus ticket out of town.”
The missing car is a bright red Chrysler Conquest TSI, with a sticker price of $21,000. “The guy obviously didn’t go for inconspicuous,” Nelson said.
As police search for Washington, the young man and the car, which is in the police system as stolen, Nelson has instructed the sales staff to take down driver’s license information from all prospective buyers and to leave that data with another salesperson before driving off the lot. “Even if the address isn’t valid,” he said, “the police have someplace to start. In this instance we haven’t any idea.”
He thought again about Washington, an employee he described as “very punctual, very reliable,” and said, “This guy must have been pretty smooth. Charles has refused on various occasions” to give lookers a demo ride, insisting first on a TRW credit check.
From now on Nelson’s lot man, Arman Kepekchian, will ride in the back seat whenever a salesperson takes a client for a drive. Beyond these precautions, he observed, there’s not much more to be done--”You can’t run an armed camp.”
“Nothing has happened, thank God,” said John Anton, sales manager at Porsche Audi of Downtown L.A., which is also open evenings for sales. “But we are downtown. And downtown at night in Los Angeles . . . “
Routinely, he said, “We ask the customer for his name, address, phone number and driver’s license. In the meantime, we always keep an eye on what type of car they came in. If they came in two (but not a husband and wife), we don’t take both of them” on a test drive.
At Porsche Audi of Downtown L.A., genuine interest is determined by having the “buyer” sit down and fill out an application. As that is going on, Anton said, “I’ll call the phone number he gave us to make sure it’s for real. If it’s disconnected, or it’s a motel or something, we’ll tell the guy we’re not going to take him on a test drive.”
“If anything happens during a demo ride,” he added, “we always tell the salesperson to just give them the car.” Insurance will cover it.
At Toyota of Marina del Rey, sales manager Gary Primo was making notes for the morning meeting of his sales staff, which gives about 1,000 test drives every month. He intended to remind them that failure to photocopy a customer’s driver’s license before a demo drive will result in termination of employment, no exceptions.
Twice in the last seven years, he said, before the mandatory driver’s license rule was in effect there, the dealership had cars stolen at gunpoint, but “I haven’t had a problem in three years.”
With a driver’s license with a picture, he said, “You know if it’s the person you’ve greeted, you don’t have anything to worry about . . . or as much, I should say.”
Primo added that his sales personnel “use their own judgment in many cases” beyond the required license. For instance, Primo said, a red caution flag goes up “when someone walks in” rather than driving in.
He laughed and said: “We had a guy in last night who told us he was the CEO of some company. When he left, he went out and sat down and waited for the bus.”
Toyota of Marina del Rey has a cardinal rule, he said: “When you exit the car, the keys go with you. We have had cars stolen off the lot where the keys were left in them.” If, during a test drive, a salesperson gets out to switch seats with the customer, he takes the keys with him.
Primo thought about the Charles Washington case again, and about his sales meeting. “I want to scare my salespeople,” he said. “I really do, for their own good and the good of the business.”
“When you’re marketing an $80,000 car, as compared to a $10,000 car, there are some differences” in policy in dealing with customers, said a Mercedes-Benz sales manager who asked that neither he nor his dealership be named.
He noted, for example, that repeat buyers or friends of the dealer are not required to produce a driver’s license for photocopying before taking off for a test spin in a new Mercedes.
A prospective customer walking cold into a Mercedes dealership, he added, is screened to determine “affordability” of a Mercedes, including information on whether he or she “has had any previous highline cars in the past. You don’t just jump into the car and take a demo ride.”
And good-sense precautions are taken. “If we have three people coming in (to look) and none of them are related, we would put just one in the car,” he said. With just one salesperson--so as not to appear “overbearing to our customers.”
And when it comes time to write the check for that 560SL? “We only accept certified funds,” he said.
On the other hand, at Felix Chevrolet, located in a high-crime area near the Coliseum, customers must show a valid driver’s license and fill out a check-in slip giving their insurance information before being taken for a demo ride.
“The thief’s not going to be carrying I.D. on him,” reasoned manager John Sanchez.
For a ride in a no-frills used Chevy, that’s all that’s required, Sanchez said, but “if it’s an exotic or new car or limited-production car, then we’re going to be a little more discriminating.”
Has he had incidents at Felix? “Oh, sure,” he said. “Everybody has.” But he has never had a salesperson disappear while giving a demo ride.
Bill Koerner, sales manager at Pioneer Hyundai in North Hollywood and a 15-year veteran of the car-selling business, was recalling a story from his days selling Toyotas:
A customer was test-driving a Supra, with the salesman in the passenger seat. “As they drove, the guy said: ‘Man, this car doesn’t have the get-up and go. It’s not like my Porsche.’ At that point, the salesperson suggested, ‘Here, I’ll show you how to drive it.’ He gets out (to change seats) and the guy drives off. Pretty soon we get a phone call: ‘You guys missing a Supra? It’s gonna cost you $300 to get it back.’ ”
According to Koerner, an arrangement was made for a rendezvous at a 7-Eleven store where police, alerted by the Toyota agency, were waiting for the thief.
Pioneer Hyundai follows standard precautions. Beyond that, Koerner said, it’s a judgment call by the salesperson, which is tricky because “you’re schooling these people not to judge a book by its cover.”
Hyundai has not had a big problem, Koerner said. “When you’re dealing with a product like ours, an inexpensive car, an affordable car, you’re not going to get that . . . A fellow’s going to steal a car, he’s going to steal a car. If I was going to steal a car, I wouldn’t steal a Hyundai. I’d steal a Mercedes.”
Arman Kepekchian, the lot man at Barish Chrysler-Plymouth, was thinking about Monday night, the last time he saw Charles Washington. He recalled that when Washington had not returned with his customer by 8, closing time, he had locked the doors and left lights on in one office, reasoning, “Sometimes he sits down late and talks with customers.”
Tuesday morning Washington’s personal car still sat on the lot and his briefcase was still in his office. About 11 a.m., the office manager called his residence. He had not been home.
Kepekchian was still pondering the situation. “No car, no salesman, nobody.”
