Do certain cars attract less than desirable customers?

I have noticed that over the years…men who drive Ford pickups are some of the worst drivers on the road. They are usually at the head of a long line of traffic and seem to occupy the passing lane on the interstate highways going well below the posted speed limit. This is merely an observation from many years on the road in many different states.

My family drives four BMWs, so I can neither confirm nor deny the stereotype about BMW drivers…

I tell my kids that there are three kinds of cars to look out for with regard to aggressive driving and road rage:

  1. 20-30 year-old full size American cars, typically with body damage. These may be driven by someone who has no control over his life, can’t keep up with his bills, has a low-paying menial job in which he gets abused by some jerk supervisor that is younger than he is. This person has one little window in his day when he is in control - when he is driving. If you inadvertently cut him off, expect rage.
  2. Service pickups with ladders on the racks. These people are chronically late for their next service call so they start every job getting berated by the client, and no matter how good of a job they do, the client will still be angry. These folks will run you off the road if you get in their way.
  3. 5-10 minutes before 8 AM or 9 AM. Older compact car. Young woman inside putting on makeup in rearview mirror. May be found driving in bike lane.

Here is a breakdown of cars driven by people of different occupations in the late 1940s and early 1950s:
Medical doctors:. Buick
Conservative college professors and public school principals:. Dodge
Liberal college professors:. Nash, Studebaker
Public school teachers: Plymouth
College Deans:. DeSoto
College President’s: Chrysler
High level CEOs: Cadillac
Middle level managers: Oldsmobile
Farmers: Ford
Factory workers: Chevrolet

I will leave it to the younger folk on this board to update the list to reflect today’s preferences.

I agree.

That said, if you’re sitting at a stop light next to this:

he’s somewhat more likely to be a jerk than the average driver. :wink:

Medical doctors:. BMW/Mercedes/Audi/Porsche
Conservative college professors and public school principals:. Ford
Liberal college professors:. Honda/Toyota (Prius, specifically)
Public school teachers: Honda
College Deans:. Acura/Lexus
College President’s: Whatever the school gives them as a company car.
High level CEOs: Limo/BMW/Mercedes/Porsche/Audi
Middle level managers: Lexus
Farmers: Ford/Chevy
Factory workers: Old Honda

As far as undesirable customers go . . . I have no comment

But more often than not, when some person is driving really aggressively, speeding at dangerous speeds, cutting people off, quick lane changes without signaling AND looking, honking the horn, tailgating, etc. . . . it’s VERY often a Prius driver

I don’t really understand it . . . I’m just calling it as I see it

@db4690 In the 1960s, it was the VW Beetle driver that was wild. I guess today’s Prius driver replaced yesterday’s VW Beetles drivers.

I mentioned the “coal rolling” jacked up trucks and a nice example has been posted here. These things will smoke out an entire roadway and they turn them up on purpose to create this type of nonsense. There used to be a guy in town that would drive around in too high of a gear and lug the engine, leaving a continual trail of black smoke. My GF calls these things “small penis trucks” as they must be compensating for something.

As for the F150 being the worst, isn’t this also like the best selling vehicle? Hasn’t it been that way for many years in a row? That would mean there are more of them on the road so that might bias opinions.

I have to say that minivans seem like the bad actors around here, especially the older Chrysler ones. I normally don’t like Chrysler products but this might be a testament to these. The vans seem like they are solid products compared to their others so they stick around longer than others.

One lady in particular really pissed me off once. I was the shop foreman at a multi-line import dealer and one morning the service manager told me a Subaru owner was coming in at 1 P.M. to have a constant vibration looked at. It was stated that she had the car in a dealer across town 3 or 4 times with no improvement. For some odd reason the service manager seemed to be pandering to someone we did not even know.

At 1 she showed up and I questioned her a bit about the problem. We then went for a ride on the freeway. There was a subtle vibration that felt like a minor tire balance issue; say a 1/4 ounce off. I tell her this and she got defensive while stating they had been balanced many times already.
I told her that maybe the balancer was out of calibration but that’s where we would have to start. She said she wasn’t going to pay sxxt. I told her the mechanic had to be paid. If not, she needed to return to the other dealer. She refused.

At that point she leaned over, picked up an attache’ case from the floor, and sat it in her lap., She opened it up and I saw a .45 Semi-auto. She patted it and said “don’t be afraid. It’s only for mechanics who try to screw me over”.
Now I’m boiling mad and trying to remain professional about it all. I told her guns did not scare me as I owned a number of them.
Things were quiet for a few minutes and I made a lightning fast move for the A/C fan control. She jumped suddenly with her eyes wide open. I told her I thought I heard a noise and it was a good thing that I wasn’t a thug or she would have been in trouble before even getting a hand on that gun.

She was ticked but not half as much as me. When we got back to the dealer I thanked her for coming in but felt we could do nothing for her so she would be better off going elsewhere. I told the service manager she was a nut case best left alone.
No doubt she spent the rest of the day cursing the day I was born.

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Way to go :+1:

Back in my days as a gas pump jockey (late '60s), it seemed like the consistently nicest folks were the ones driving Ford Country Squire station wagons–the wagons with the simulated wood siding. As to “undesirables” or jerks, I can’t really recall anything relating to a specific make of car.

I do recall multiple problems with people requesting that we “check the radiator”, but failing to tell us that the car was overheating before they entered the station. However, there was no particular pattern of makes or models connected with that type of inconsiderate driver behavior.

After one of the employees–Georgie–was hit in the head by a ballistic radiator cap and badly scalded by the steam rushing out of a radiator, the station manager posted a sign stating, “NO radiator checks. Don’t even ask!”

As for customers, the customer you want is the guy driving a Porsche Carrera or similar. Tell him that it will cost $4k to replace his cam chains and tensioners and he will be bragging to his friends at the golf course for the rest of the year how much he spends to keep his Porsche up. Tell a guy with an old Chevy pickup that it will cost $400 to replace his cam chain and he may cuss you, question your competence and integrity, and yell at your boss.

And you think insulting people is fun?
That’s very sad.

Post a photo of what YOU drive… or are you too embarrassed to?

I used to deal with nutcases all the time but have gotten pretty strict about requiring money upfront which has greatly reduced my occurrence of these types of people. I had at least two call me yesterday and they were all pissed that i wouldn’t look at their stuff for free.

I would have been very tempted to get the gun away from that woman and call the police as soon as she was distracted with driving or whatever. There is no reason for this type of behavior and I have come to the conclusion that something needs to be done about these types of people. I have called my competitors a couple of times when I have to deal with a really bad customer informing them of what happened and tell them NOT to provide service to this individual.

Overall the people with money to spend on nice cars, a nice house, and such are my best customers. The POOR PEOPLE with a nice car are a different story. They may drive up in a $70,000 vehicle but are “on a fixed income” and all that kind of crap. The “on a fixed income” and related statements are signs that is is time to RUN, not walk, away from that customer.

As for cars being a sign of the type of person… I was thinking. Someone driving a run of the mill beater is usually fine. Someone driving a beater with all types of nonsense on the car like rims worth more than the car, window tint, stickers, etc. are usually the ones you watch out for.

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As regards the question in the thread’s heading, I believe certain cars DO attract less than desirable customers.
And the thought of who’s likely to buy Dodge Demons is scary! :scream:

Mr. Mountainbike (with the letter e). I really think insightful was trying to be humorous, and not insulting. Sometimes it is hard to convey things with written word on a forum.

That said the question this thread asks is kind of silly anyway.

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Well, I have encountered some drivers who could probably benefit from an exorcism
:wink:

Than he needs to learn that insulting others isn’t humorous.

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Wild VW Beetle drivers explained…
As a Volkswagen Type 1 (64 sea blau Beetle) driver, during the 1960s, I have to confess to that being an accurate assessment! :blush:

With only 40 hp. one had to learn “special driving techniques” in order to blend with the other vehicles of the day. Plus, consider that in rain or freezing conditions, we couldn’t really see through the windshield. It made us look bad.

Inadequate power for acceleration required one of the special driving techniques for passing cars (especially in a head-wind). When encountering a car going under the speed limit, the VW driver would have to drop back a ways and then get a running start up to the back of that vehicle, and move slightly left and check for oncoming traffic while still “closing” on the car.

If traffic was present the VW driver would have to hit the brakes and get back in line. No traffic meant keep the pedal to the metal and complete the pass.

Since passing, especially in short passing zones, was so difficult that we bug drivers would sometimes keep on going and pass a few more cars before merging back into our lane. That made us look bad.

Do you remember the saying from the 60s, “If you lined up 25 cars end-to-end on the highway, some fool in a VW Bug would try and pass them all!” ?

Don’t laugh. It is possible to do this. Don’t ask me how I know. :wink: It made us look bad. :grimacing:
CSA

+1
And, I can add that my brother owned a '64 beetle that was also painted Zee Blau!
It was actually a decently-reliable car–until his father-in-law deferred all maintenance (but continued to drive the car in exclusively local driving) while my brother was overseas in the Army. I can recall going to the FIL’s house on multiple occasions to jump-start that VW–and we all know how “convenient” it was to jump-start those cars.

When my brother returned from Vietnam a year later, the car was pretty much a mechanical disaster.

How many times did Tom & Ray call each other “moron”?

I take this friendly ribbing as part of the Car Talk culture.

My current car is my avatar, an Insight (get it?), and I like it as much as (I assume) you like your car.

I sincerely apologize for assuming you have a sense of humor; it won’t happen again.

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