Car Salesman Won’t Give Up on Stalled Auto Industry
In the early ‘60s, a friend and I would sit on an embankment next to a busy Omaha street and play a game of count-the-cars. One of us would take Fords, the other Chevys and whoever got to 50 won. It didn’t take long to play a best-of-seven series.
Nowadays, you’d have to get an early start in the morning to finish a best two-out-of-three by nightfall.
Red Jarvie remembers those halcyon days with all the serenity of someone who made a lot of money off of them, which he did. As a rookie salesman in 1958, Jarvie watched as Chevrolet introduced the new Impala in midyear and helped stave off what had been a poor season.
Careening into the ‘60s, selling Chevys continued on its rollicking, swaggering course. Business was so steady, Jarvie says, that a salesman could have nothing in his pocket on the 20th of the month and still feel confident he’d be OK by the 1st. Making five hundred bucks on a weekend wasn’t considered any big deal. A go-getter could pull down $10,000 a month.
Priding himself on his follow-up phone calls and repeat business, Jarvie says he worked 80 to 90 hours a week. “It all depended on how much money you wanted to make,” he said. “We would have dinner parties, we used to have May-June campaigns where you could win prizes and trips, which all seems to have petered out now. This was all sponsored by the dealers and the corporation. It no longer exists.”
He remembers the introduction of Japanese cars into the States back in those days and of hearing the Big 3 auto makers say if the import market could be kept around 17%, there would be nothing to worry about. The foreign threat was seen as so insignificant that some franchises were practically given away.
The thought of imports knocking off Ford and Chevy? No way.
Well, as the dudes say today, yes way.
Now 33 years into the business, Jarvie, 65, can only look back on those glory days through the rearview mirror of nostalgia. Chevy car salesmen today are making less than Jarvie did 30 years ago. The import share of the market has doubled, and some people think we’re witnessing the demise of the American auto industry.
All of which makes Jarvie--to tidy up his language a bit--angry.
“The whole thing is ridiculous,” he says. He still works for a Fullerton dealership, selling fleet vehicles. He’s griped at the way the government and the Big 3 have seemingly conspired to wound the domestic auto business.
He says things like, “The current product line is one of the worst we’ve ever had,” but the words aren’t hateful. Rather, they sound like they’re coming from a parent who’s sorry to see a child stray.
He points to a bulging book on his desk and says: “Those are the various programs we’re in right now, like for the handicapped, the first-time buyer, the military, rebates. . . . Which is all garbage. Cut them out. It’s Mickey Mouse. Cut the price of the car and give us some quality.”
How is the business different today than the glory years, I asked him.
“Let me answer that this way. If Chevrolet had a comparable product line to what we used to have, instead of all these variations of cars. . . . Customers come in today and they’ll be so confused when they walk out they don’t know what to buy. There are way too many choices.
“If you remember when people used to go out and buy, you bought a Bel-Air and that was it. You didn’t buy it with Packages 1, 2, 3 and 4. They’ve got it so complicated now that a salesperson, if they want to have product knowledge, they almost have to wear a computer on their belt. With all the models and all the variations to those models, it is a complicated business now. It’s not as simple as it was before.”
Jarvie thinks the doomsayers are wrong on GM and Ford, but concedes that the companies “have not gotten their act together.” For example, he says, Southern California has a tremendous untapped potential for ride-sharing--a market that no car company has targeted.
“They’re talking about not being able to sell,” he says. “There’s a market out here that’s golden, and they’re not touching it. You can’t blame that on Japan.”
While we were talking, I looked at his 1992 calendar. It features a picture of the ’57 Chevy, and I said it still looks as good as most other cars on the road.
Jarvie agreed, almost hailing it as a symbol of excellence from a company to which he’s given 33 years.
It prompted an almost inevitable suggestion of mine that the bubble has burst.
“In my opinion, the bubble hasn’t burst,” Jarvie says. “I honestly believe GM has the technical know-how, the experience and the access to all the capital they need to turn the whole thing around--if they want to do it. I had a phone call from a woman the other day. She said if GM goes under, am I going to be able to get parts for my car. I said we’re not going under. Don’t believe everything you hear.”
