By Teresa A. Martin
Those of you have seen me lately know that my new nickname seems to have become ‘gimpy’ – let’s just say that my middle name is certainly not Grace and that I am now very careful to take stairs only one step at a time.
The upshot of all this is that with my left foot in an aircast, the act of pressing a clutch in a car is not terribly comfortable, so I went Out & About to find a suitable used vehicle with an automatic transmission ... and along the way I was reminded about online identity, trust, and the technology-changed nature of the used car market.
Because so much of my time is spent online, the first place I went to look was, naturally, the web. As I explored, I was reminded that it has never been so easy to be pre-armed with knowledge before making a major purchase – knowledge about both vehicles and market prices.
I also emailed people I knew who know cars. I peppered them with questions and they sent me information, links, and arguments for what I should look for.
This wasn’t some random process though. I was applying filters of either known parties or trusted brands in seeking information. Edmunds. NADA. Car and Driver. Brands that existed before the web but that executed their content in meaningful ways online were the first places I turned. I didn’t even do a broad Google search. And then I moved to MSN/Autos – the content site that Microsoft does well and has in my mind become a trusted identity for information. Once again, a known brand.
The online world is vast, but not all information is equal.
And so, armed with some background, I set out to search. I looked at specific dealerships – no, of course I didn’t physically troop all over creation! I searched the online inventory listings of used vehicles. And again, I was reminded of brand – that these were known places. The Volvo dealerships within a 100 mile radius. The Saab dealerships. The Subaru dealerships.
Now, if I had to physically visit these place ... wouldn’t have happened. Dealers have always traded cars from location to location to match customer demands ... but now customers can also do their own searching, swapping, and dealing. And because I talk to everyone, I pretty quickly learned that my two-hour market size was not unique. Lots of car shoppers are following a similar formula. Hint to the car industry: you have more potential customers than you realize ... and you have more competition than you know, all because technology changes the notion of geographic boundaries.
But none of these cars were right for me.
Just about then, Craigs List entered the picture. One of the friends I’d emailed in turn emailed me a set of ads that sort of matched my criteria. Craigs List, if you’ve not been there, is a series of local online listings where people can connect over everything from housing rentals to used cars to used sofas to finding someone to go to a movie with. It’s the ultimate community classifieds.
So, I clicked on the links to a few promising vehicles. They lead me to used car dealers. Which is actually OK. While I am highly unlikely to go kicking real tires while a greasy guy named Jake watches, I will browse through online photos and auto information. It feels, well, safe.
The friend who mailed me the entry on Craigs List and I took a field trip to see one of the car listed. It was in Plymouth. The location turned out to be a big warehouse. There were lots of businesses located within. The door to the Plymouth Motor Cars company was locked.
We peered in the tiny window. There were some very nice looking cars in there, but my brain was spinning. They created a believable presence on line, but what is their real identity? Is this a stolen car operation? My overactive imagination started to see all kinds of possibilities. There isn’t even a phone number on the door!
“Should we just leave!?!?” I asked my friend. He rolled his eyes at me and called information on his cell phone. There was no listing for the company.
“Maybe we should just leave?!?!?” I asked again. He rolled his eyes at me again and stuck his head into the auto detailing shop next door to talk to an actual human being.
“They are at lunch” he reported. We decided to do same, but the whole time I was savoring garlic stuffed nan, I was also pondering the nature of online identity versus physical identity and how easily we trust.
We returned to the warehouse. There were two humans there this time. We looked at the car. We drove the car. We talked to the humans for a long time and by the end I began to think that I’ve been pretty silly to fear the warehouse because what I was actually seeing was a new model of running a car business.
It turns out these two guys are real car guys, have owned traditional dealerships, and got sick of it all. Now they use their network of contacts to buy cars that interest them. They pick two categories: nice used mostly European cars for a higher end market and good quality but often high mileage cars for a lower cost market. They advertise on Craigs List (free) and a couple of the online auto classifieds (very inexpensive). Their overhead is the warehouse space and inventory. They are having fun and making a business work in way that works for them ... because technology and the trend toward virtualization makes it possible.
But sometimes it takes that extra factor to seal the deal – and guess what, it was there too. Turns out one guy’s dads knew my friend’s dad back from the old time auto row in Brighton back in 50s and 60s. Sort of a full circle.
I was satisfied. And yes, the new (used) Volvo wagon is happily sitting in my driveway, thanks to connectivity and the intersection of online and real world commerce.
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