These days our phones know way too much about us. But they don’t know everything. For instance, my phone knows that I always look at cars and so it thinks that I want to buy a car. But I don’t. Well, I do but I don’t – many of you know what I mean. Local dealerships are showing me their inventories and discounted sale prices at which I generally just smirk and wonder if people actually pay that money for new cars. Others are a bit smarter and show me their used inventory.
One local-ish Honda dealership was e-throwing their used car inventory at me and that’s when things got interesting. Their used inventory was a it was different. Instead of a three year old CR-V there was a Ferrari 488 – two of them actually! Instead of an Accord V6 it showed me a Porsche 993 Turbo. I could imagine a Honda dealership having a clean S2000 in stock, but no, they showed me Austin Healey. How about not one, not two, but three ’87 911 Turbos?
I have no idea what the hell is going on here. I am quite certain that no one traded-in a ’72 Ferrari 246 GT for a loaded Pilot with rear entertainment system. In search of more utility, no one upgraded from a 328 GTS to a Ridgeline pickup. I can actually see someone ditching their Austin Healey for a Civic Type R, however.
I am guessing that the dealership either picked those up on some auction or perhaps the owners of the place are huge car enthusiasts. Perhaps buying whatever cars they want and throwing dealer plates on them and driving them around is maximum fun at a minimum cost. It could go like this for them: acquire cars they love, promptly list them for sale with a high price – if they sell, good. If they don’t sell, who cares they get to drive them.
What makes even less sense is that the rest of the inventory is incredibly plain. The most interesting vehicle in their lot is a $6,231 Scion tC with a manual transmission and over 130,000 miles on its clock. Manual lovers might also appreciate the three JK-era Wranglers that probably won’t sell very quickly. But that’s really it in terms of enthusiasts’ interests. If the phone IA was any good they would have shown me those vehicles.
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