Jim, with the help of Greg and a few friends, works out a plan to beat the used car dealers at their own game. But…
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, April 24, 1948.
“I’ve decided,” announced Jimmie Frise, “to sell my car.”
“Jim, you’re crazy!” I exclaimed.
“No: I’ve just decided I’m smart,” he declared. “I’m going to cut the price of my new car by $6002.”
“But you told me last night,” I protested, “that the car dealer said he couldn’t get you a new car until August or September.”
“Precisely,” agreed Jim. “The fact that summer is almost here, plus the extreme shortage of new cars, is what accounts for the fact that I can get $600 more for my old car than it’s worth.”
“You mean,” I cried, “that to make $600 you are going to do without a car all summer?”
“With a little co-operation from you,” admitted Jim, “that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Co-operation?” I queried.
“Yes,” said Jim. “You see, you are away at your summer cottage for two weeks in July, during which time your car stands idle in a tumble-down old rented garage up at the Landing. I figure you wouldn’t mind letting me have the use of your car during those two weeks…”
“Jim,” I interrupted. “There’s May, June, July and August…”
“Correct,” said Jim, “I’ve telephoned three or four others among my friends, checking their holiday schedules. There’s Bumpy and Bill Sparra and Harry Wilcox. They’re all taking their holidays at different times through the summer. And it so happens they are going to summer hotels up the lakes, where they abandon their cars, at the end of the highway, having to pay rent for garages…”
“Jim, look here,” I cut in sternly. “Use your common sense. How are you going to run all over the country, borrowing people’s cars?”
“It will be fun,” assured Jim. “It will be sort of like a holiday in itself. For example, when you go up to your cottage, I’ll go with you and drive your car back here and use it for the two weeks, bringing it up to the Landing the Sunday you are coming down. See?”
“But…” I began.
“You’d far rather,” cried Jim, “leave the car in my care than leave it in one of those baking summer resort garages, where anybody can break in!”
“I suppose that’s true,” I grudged.
“At any rate,” he announced, “if I sell my car now, at top prices, I get the new car for hundreds of dollars less, don’t you see? I bet I wouldn’t get $300 for it next September when my new car is ready. Yet I saw the same year and model as my car up at one of those used car lots for $900.”
“Surely not!” I scoffed. “Nine hundred dollars?”
“It’s a fact,” cried Jim. “I’ll drive you up and show you.”
“Still, to be without a car all summer,” I brooded, “is a pretty serious matter, Jim. In a sense, it’s really for summer – for the five months from May until October – that we own cars, most of us.”
“Exactly what has created the present market for used cars,” pointed out Jim. “The way to make easy money in this world is to take advantage of the weaknesses and needs of your fellow man. You’ll never get ahead in this world if you just work for wages or salary all your life. My new car next fall is going to cost $1,700. By taking advantage of the present market, as well as the good nature of half a dozen of my friends, I will buy that car for only $1,100. That’s what you call business.”
“You run certain risks,” I reminded him. “Suppose you crack up one of your friends’ cars?”
“I run that risk driving my own old jalopy,” countered Jim. “In fact, I will be far more careful driving your car and Bill Sparra’s and Harry Wilcox’s than I would my own. Every way you look at it, it’s a wise and shrewd move on my part.”
“Jim,” reflected, “there is a moral aspect to this business. If you did without a car all summer, that would be the price you pay for that $600 you are going to make. In other words, to earn $600, you sacrifice your car for the summer.”
“Are you hinting,” inquired Jim, “that you don’t want to lend me your car, when it’s lying idle anyway?”
“No, no!” I hastened. “I just feel there’s something immoral about this used car racket, selling old jalopies at outrageous prices, just by taking advantage of the widespread desire to drive cars in summer. If you were going to do without a car for the summer suppresses that natural desire, why, the $600 you would make would look quite so… so…”
“What I say,” declared Jim, “is, make use of every advantage in this world. Among the advantages we possess are a number of fine friends who would be glad to lend me their cars for a couple of weeks, partly for the sake of friendship, partly to see me make $600; and partly to save them the rent on those tumble-down summer resort garages where goodness knows what might happen to your car…”
“Okay, okay,” I surrendered. “And it will be $600 that won’t show in your income tax, Jim. I suppose the smartest guys in this world are the traders who make deals like this all the time. We salary and wage earners are the suckers.”
“I’ve been a sucker long enough,” said Jim, rising and pulling down his vest and lighting a cigarette with a very big-executive flourish. “It will give me a new self-respect, next fall, to be driving around in a car that cost me 600 bucks less than those of all the suckers I pass in traffic. Do you want to come up with me while I shop around and make the sale? Do you know any of these used car lot pirates?”
“The fact is,” I replied, “not only do I not know any of them, I’ve never seen any of them. I’ve looked at hundreds of used car lots in passing, but now that I come to think of it, I’ve never in my life seen anybody around them. Just a great big corner lot packed with motor cars sitting there. And no human inhabitant in sight.”
“Oh, they’ll be there, all right,” assured Jim. “They hide at the back, somewhere.”
So we went out to Jim’s garage and took a last look at Old Maud, Jim’s faithful schooner for more than 10 years. Many’s the thousands of miles it has carried us on fishing trips and hunting trips. Many’s the $10, $20 and $50 it has cost to have its engine overhauled, its brakes relined, its clutch repaired. Many’s the thousands of dollars’ worth of gas its rusty old engine has inhaled in our service.
“I’ll just get a pail of water and a rag,” said Jim, “and give her a wipe.”
While Jim was sponging off the exterior of Old Maud, he had me, with a whisk-broom, tidying up the interior, from the trunk compartment, I removed sundry personal odds and ends, such as a set of rusty chains, an old shovel and an accumulation of ancient car tools that had shaken themselves into out-of-the-way corners of the compartment.
“No wonder she’s rattled,” remarked Jim, as I passed him carrying an armful of salvage toward the garage. Jim sponged off the body, fenders and windows; and I took the hose and tidied up the wheels and spokes. Little by little, Old Maud took on a genteel if shabby expression. We hadn’t seen her so clean in years. But just the same, her scars showed more clearly.
“It’s better, perhaps,” pondered Jim, as we stood back and surveyed the old schooner, “not to tidy up an old car too much. It only accentuates its age, like cosmetics on an old woman.”.
“Anybody,” I stated, “who would pay $900 for an old crock like that is nuts.”
“Not nuts,” smiled Jim, patting the wobbly hood, “just summer madness.”
“Do you feel any twinges of sorrow on bidding goodbye to an old friend and faithful car like this?” I asked.
“Aw, no,” said Jim, lightly. “Some cars, like some people, can live too long. Come on. Let’s get it over with.”
“You won’t sell it right tonight!” I protested.
“If I get a decent offer, I’ll sell right now,” said Jim.
“But what about the family? Are they reconciled to being without a car?”
“I’ve explained the whole deal to them,” said Jimmie. “And they all are in complete agreement. I’ve promised to allow them $5 a week for taxis, in special cases of emergency. Then I figured you wouldn’t mind lending me your car once in a while, for special occasions…”
“Mmmmm,” I reflected.
“I’ve suggested the same to Bumpy and Bill Sparra and Harry Wilcox,” went on Jim. “The family figure we’ll be a lot better off, for a while, than we’ve been with Old Maud here.”
Jim waved me into the car and stepped on the starter. Old Maud’s starter whined and whimpered, and finally the engine exploded into life, and the usual fumes belched up through the worn matting on the floor boards.
“I’ll take you first,” shouted Jim, “to the place they have this same model at $900.
A few blocks away, we arrived at the large used car lot of McGrigor, Mortis & Co. A big banner over the entrance bore the company’s name and the legend: “Highest Prices Paid.”
Along the front of the lot, there was an array of the handsomest new cars you would see even at a motor show. Resplendent, shining, glittering, none of them showed the slightest sign of having been used at all. But as we drove in the lane, we saw that back of the glittering cars were close-packed ranks less glittering cars. And farther back still, were rows and rows of cars that didn’t glitter at all. These most backward ranks of cars all had prices painted on the windshield with whitewash. $375 or $500 or $625. Only the shabbiest cars had the indignity of prices painted on them.
Sure enough, as we drove down deep into the lot, a man emerged from a little shack and came toward us cautiously.
“Mr. McGrigor?” inquired Jimmie heartily, out the car window. “Or Mr. Mortis?”
“Neither,” said the gentleman. “They’re both in Florida. What can I do for you?”
“I was thinking of selling this car,” said Jim, as though in doubt.
“You might get somebody to buy it,” agreed the gent.
“What would you give me for it?” inquired Jim.
“How much do you want for it?” countered the used car man.
“Well, you’re the buyer,” smiled Jim. “What would you offer?”
“No, I’m not the buyer,” smiled the used car man, “I’m only interested in selling cars. How would $250 catch you?”
Jim was stunned.
“Two,” he croaked, “fifty!”
“That’s all it’s worth to me,” said the used car man.
“But…” sputtered Jim, “right over there is the same model as this offered at $900!”
“Aw, sure,” said the used car man, “but that car has a new engine in it and only two years ago it had a new transmission and rear end. We’ve put a lot of work on that, the same as we would with this if we bought it.”
“Two fifty!” fumed Jim. “Why, I’ll sell it privately, I’ll advertise it…”
“Sure, sure,” laughed the used car man, “and in about a month, the buyer will be back with it, saying you misrepresented it; and he’ll sue you unless you give him back $400.”
“Do they sue you?” demanded Jim bitterly.
“Aw, no,” explained the used car man. “We do a lot of work on the cars we take in. And in the contract of sale, we make mention of all the work done, see. How about $250?”
Jim did not answer. He backed Old Maud out the lane, and in silence we drove back home.
As he turned off the ignition in the side drive, Jimmie spoke for the first time.
“Imagine,” he said tenderly, “imagine selling a faithful, wonderful old car like this for $250!”
He patted the seat affectionately. He ran his hands lovingly over the steering wheel.
“Next fall, when the new car is ready,” he said. “It will break my heart to part with her.”
“At that price,” I added.
“You have no sentiment,” accused Jim.
Editor’s Notes:
- David Harum references a movie (and book) about a businessman and a horse he purchased. The story is known more today for the racist stereotype played by the black actor Stepin Fetchit. ↩︎
- $600 in 1948 would be $8,480 in 2024 ↩︎
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