The strange world of Lotus sales

and caught the thing on fire in front of the customer one of the brands that we represented at the dealership where I worked was Lotus and as our boy Doug might say they were full of a lot of quirks and not that many features it was a peculiar brand to sell because the customers were a little bit strange and the cars were a little bit strange and at this point I'm a huge proponent of the Elise and Exige cars in particular as great automotive investments to me they've kind of caught Land Rover Defender itis there's not very many of them and there's sort of a car that due to modern safety regulations really can't be recreated and so I think over time they're gonna go up the same way we've seen defenders go for the last 10 to 15 years and they'll eventually sell for an awful lot of money because it's the kind of thing that you really can't find anything else that's quite like it and so if I could fit in one a little bit more comfortably I'd really I'd get a Exige 260 or something like that because I think they're great cars and those were pretty reliable but when the Evora came out it was a little bit of a different story it was not a terribly well-constructed car and we started to just see a lot of issues and they would just do these strange things when they built them and it was a time when Lotus is a brand was particularly insolvent and so you'd see some strange things but for a while they used red wires for the negative battery terminals and the cars used these tiny little batteries to add lightness and so if you park them for three or four days it will be dead when you return to the car and so I would have to go out to somebody who'd shown up to try to test drive one and presumably you'd be interested in buying it and jumpstart the car every time and if you're doing it quick and it's been a little while since you jumped one eye at one point positive to the red wire and caught the thing on fire in front of the customer fortunately there was a car covered there because we kind of smother it out so it wasn't that big of a deal and I guess the electrical system limited the damage and it started right up we drove it and he ended up not deciding to buy it unsurprisingly but they would use this unbelievably cheap thin leather on the dashboards and the airbag covers that would always shrink I mean if you parked one outside for three or four weeks it would start to bow on the edges and creep back from the seams and it was just a nightmare and the warranty would cover it but sometimes it would take six or seven months to get a new - and when you've got it you wouldn't want to put it right in because you knew it was gonna happen again and so you'd sort of wait till you thought you had the car sold then get it into the shop and the timing never really mattered because the cars were usually in inventory for at least you know eight to twelve months before they would leave so they were very very challenging cars to sell and I was really excited about the Evora when it came out I mean I thought you know it's a perfect price point it's a great brand with a ton of racing heritage this is gonna be a lot of fun but the Camry motor they put in it was just completely lackluster and I just I could never love the car as much as I wanted to it looked great but just the build quality was so weird and they leaked water everywhere and that water particularly in Georgia would attract ants and the weather stripping wasn't that tight so they would get right in and it was not that uncommon to walk out to one in the summer and literally find the car filled with ants and the only way you can really get that number of ants out of a car is to overheat the inside for their body temperatures and so if you turn the heat to max and then just Park it in the Sun for a few hours all the antal leave then you just move it and you know you just spray underneath or whatever but we had that happen all the time and it was interesting to sell a lotus because the best way to do it actually was to try to talk the buyer out of it they come in with kind of this martyrdom complex that they want an uncomfortable and unaccommodating car and what you really want to do is make them continually say that kind of walk them through the logic of saying well you know they're not that comfortable and there's not that many creature comfort features that are gonna make the car nice and accommodating and say yeah yeah I love it I love a race car all the light suede and you know I don't need to get garbage yes but I mean you know that because of this construction they're a little bit hard to work on so the labor times are a little bit longer and you know you're not gonna go out and find independent service because really you need someone like our techs that are trained for this stuff oh yeah yeah I get it's a race car you know it's what I want I want to you know really have some of this real driving machine okay all right you know that you know because of that some of the consumables go pretty fast tires brakes clutches things like that and they can be a little more Spencer absolutely you know trickle down Formula One technology that's what I'm looking for yep let me have it let me have it and you know they're pretty rare so if you're looking at a pre-owned one we're not really pick out your favorite colors or anything it's really you know what we've got is because they're hard to find yep yep I get it I'm just glad to have a rare car it's exactly what I want and every time you say something yes I want to buy it yes I want to buy it and they're disregarding these logic hurdles that normally you'd have to overcome to convince someone so that's what I would do is just try to tell him why they shouldn't buy it and they always would buy him they were they were pretty easy cars to sell particularly the Elise Exige and really the the Evora kind of became the car that people bought because they didn't know they made caimans and they wanted something a little bit more unique and a cool British feeling sports car I had one guy who his car just developed the most atrocious squeak rattle thing around the top of the dash or the a-pillar was probably the a-pillar because those tended to crack it was miserable to drive and he came in once he said ed the only way I can tolerate driving my car is to turn my Adel all the way up so she's just screaming and I can't hear how loud the car is we've got to get it fixed and I'll tell another story about that customer and some others at one point because that was the only customer I've ever known to get trade assistance from a manufacturer to buy a car from another manufacturer in order to keep him from lemon law in the car so that'll be a good one for another day but I had this other guy come in and he just seemed literally certifiably insane and he really wanted an allure and he had like 25 or 30 grand to put down and so on a 65 thousand dollar car that was something manageable and he had decent credit but not much experience and we ended up getting him a loan but as we were going through it were like we have to do everything exactly by the book on this deal because if we don't we're gonna end up owning this car because there's a pretty good chance this guy does not have the full intention to make all the payments he's becoming obligated to and so he drove it and he came back a couple weeks later and the entire car was just destroyed I mean he had curbed every wheel scratched every panel and he told us this crazy story about how he was trying to go and protest some appearance of Joe Biden and the Secret Service it started chasing him and he tried to make this turn too tight and he hit one of these poles I'm I mean goodness gracious and unsurprisingly he didn't make any of his payments and if you don't make any of your payments in most cases the dealer is responsible to buy the car back the bank and so we ended up having to help them find it and do it and it's the only place I ever saw the car after it had left the dealership was at a local very suspect massage parlor but we got the car back got it reconditioned and did ok getting out of it because he had put so much money down that is one thing about Lotus owners they fancy themselves the shrewdest of negotiators I remember at one point I had a guy call me about an Esprit that we had and I loved Lotus Esprit the first sports car I ever tried to buy was actually a 94 s3 s4 and I loved it I love the lines it's just so exotic for the price point that it occupies but they are miserable to keep running and there was always something wrong with it but we had one I think it was a 98 twin turbo v8 car and it was working at the time and we were kind of like alright we got to get this thing out of here and so I had this guy calling it was interested and he made me a low but not like hugely insulting offer and you know I sort of argued so if we can do your number I'm not saying that we can but if we do you're committed you're gonna come here tomorrow and you're gonna write us a check for the car and he said oh yeah absolutely I'm in I want the car and so I said all right let me go work on my manager and see if we can get the deal put together so I hang up with him and go over there to talk to my boss and I say this is what this guy wants to pay he says he's gonna come here and do it it doesn't sound like it's gonna be a complicated deal that I need to finance and I know it's low but I know at the same time like I don't really want to deal with this car all that much more and and they agreed and they eventually said alright let's just do this guy's deal and let him have it so I called him up and I said you know what congratulations it was long you know kind of a long shot but we got it done we're gonna do your deal so let me know what time you want a beer tomorrow and he said all right well I'm gonna look around and shop a little bit more and call about a few more cars over the next couple of weeks and if I don't find a better deal then I'll do what I said and I'll come pay the for the car I said that's not what you said at all I said yeah but that was really just me testing you because I wanted to see if you were gonna be reasonable and negotiate and I said are you kidding me sir I said well let me tell you what in that same time where you were testing me I was conducting my own sort of test and that was whether or not you were an honourable and trustworthy person that I could believe was gonna do what they said they were gonna do and guess what you've failed that test so I don't care if you want to buy this is Spri or anybody else's Lotus you're not gonna buy this one from me so have a good day and don't buy they're coming but the whole showroom kind of got quiet cuz obviously my voice carries and I'd gotten a little bit forceful towards the tail into that exchange and my boss came over after I'd hung up the phone and he was like you know ed you really can't talk to customers that way and I said well he wasn't gonna be a customer we were at no risk of selling him anything and I was right we never heard from him again are you looking to buy your dream car premiere Financial Services offers the flexibility of financing with the tax benefits of leasing the PF s simple lease offers quick approvals and easy termination when you are ready for the next car visit our website and follow us for more

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 1,441,649

Rating: 4.8603635 out of 5

Keywords: Lotus, Elise, Exige, Exige S, Evora, Evora S, Sales, Car Sales, Car Salesman, Track Car, Mountain Drive, Lotus Atlanta, Fire, Build Quality, Maintenance, Tactics, Exotic Car, Buying, Negotiation, Manual Transmission, Land Rover Defender, Bitcoin, Investment, Cars, Ed Bolian, Cannonball Run, Phone Interview, Police, Engine Fire, Strange Cars, Buying and Selling

Id: hTYZ-cVxiZk

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Seeker80]

A 'world of Lotus sales' almost sounds like Mr Rogers' Land of Make-Believe.

Won't you please, won't you please

Please won't you buy...this Elise.

[u/secretsantos]

This guy has the correct mix of good stories and very good storytelling. Always fun to watch. Thanks for sharing!

[u/cars_in_mtl]

I think that I could listen to Ed Bolian read a phone book, and it would still be interesting. I was initially surprised to hear that Lotus customers were really weird, until I realized that I actually really like the cars.

[u/kimkam120]

Everything he said about convincing the customer why they shouldn't buy it is every single reason I would buy it. I think with a car like the elise/exige somebody that walks up and wants to buy one or check them out has done enough research to suggest they know what they are getting into.

[u/AAfaps]

I really do love these videos, I don't understand why they're not more popular.

[u/[deleted]]

Really enjoyed this thanks for sharing!!

[u/GriffXL]

Speaking of their cheap plastic; if you park it outside a lot the plastic end tanks on the radiator will deteriorate due to UV exposure causing the radiator to eventually fail. Its location also makes replacing and bleeding coolant an exercise in patience.

Example of the service hours required to maintain these cars the guy in the video talks about is the only way to replace the radiator is to take apart the entire front end since its all one hunk of fiberglass bolted to chassis which takes far longer than it would to replace on on a regular car. Since the car is handmade the numerous fasteners have washer spacers to account for the irregularities in the construction so the mechanic need note where and how many spacers are needed to put it back together so the panels line up correctly.

[u/Yakb0]

I'm not sure if the Elise is going to become a collectible BECAUSE of its minimalism. Right now you can buy a Zenos E10, or any manner of kit cars.

I can imagine an Elise being a collectible because of the fiberglass body, and there aren't going to be that many intact ones left in a few years.

[u/Trutherist]

The Evora could be a good car, but with a Camry engine? They should have put a turbocharged Subaru H-6 in it.