[lumberjim]

Gil Bergstrom.

Gil started calling us in february of '02. he was looking for a Concorde with a bench seat. At that time I was the Internet Sales Manager, and he was my customer. He wanted white, too. The combination did not exist in a 150 mile radius of our dealership, so i reccomended that he order the car, delivery in 4-6 weeks. He never called back, but he was wierd enough on the phone that he stood out in my memory.

I had the salesmanager order a Concorde like he wanted for stock, just in case he resurfaced. 6 months later, I had moved to new car manager, and he turned back up. John had him, again on the phone. Again, he was weird. he wanted us to ship the car to Pittsburg, and offered to pay full sticker price. John wasted 2 weeks following him up, getting quotes from shipping companies, etc. No Sale.

another 6 months goes by, and we still have this "White Elephant" concorde, which is now a leftover, in stock. This time, Gil comes in to the dealership cold. No 3 days of calls first. He gets a different salesman named Dave. I recognized the name when I heard it, but since I had moved into Finance, it was late in the game. here's dave's account of the sales proccess with Gil:

First off, he shakes hands with his left hand. OK. Oh, and he looks every bit as odd as he sounded on the phone. So, he tells Dave which car he's interested in, still a white Concorde with the bench seat. So, Dave, being one of those proffessional types, goes around and gets the car, pulls it up to the door, and attempts to hand the keys to Gil. Gill flinches as if he stuck a snake in his face. "no no. Please take that remote off of the key ring first, I have a problem with electronic devices like that. If you use it around me I'll get a pain in my groin." Eyebrows go up, but Dave's a trooper.

"whaddya mean a pain in your groin? From a remote?"

"well, they make my balls tingle"

he takes the remote off of the ring, and hands the key to him.

"Ok, I need to make a copy of your drivers license."

Now Gil turns his back to Dave, and looks back at him over his left shoulder. He hands the license up over his shoulder. When dave tried to hand it back to him, after copying it, it had to be handed back in the same fashion.

Then, he has to get the seat positioned just right, but he cannot touch it. So, again, Dave has to move the seat back and forth inch by inch while Gil walked back and forth on the passenger side, trying to eye it up. "Gil, why don;t you just get in, and set it how you want it? It's power."

"No, that never works, it has to be right when i first sit in it, or I'll never get comfortable"

" well, how did you set the car you drove up in then?

"my sister"

"ok, how's this?"

"Looks ok, can we drive it now?"

"Please"

" Oh, wait. You don;t have a cell phone on you or anything, do you?"

" I'll go put it at my desk, get in"

Dave was starting to lose his patience. The test drive was one of Dave's scarriest ever. We are on a 4 lane highway with a 45 mph speed limit, and Gil drove 20mph all the way down the hill, kept veering toward the shoulder, and once stopped dead in the left lane.

dave tells me that he had the remote in his pocket, and was pushing the button the whole time they were test driving, just to see if he was telling the truth about his balls.

Guess not.

Do you think Gil bought the car?