Aww Hell

"Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection" (itsalwayssteve)
05/13/2016 at 10:36 • Filed to: stealerships, fraud, lehto's law

Back around Thanksgiving, I posted a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! about a major used car dealer that sent us some cars to get leather because they were rentals. They needed new interior. It ended up being 78 cars, with sunroofs in a bunch of the leather cars. We spent most of December just doing their cars.

So, last night, our local Charlotte “investigative news,” team broadcast this:

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Mr. Lehto - do you have any contacts in the Charlotte area who can help these folks? I remember you mentioning some federal warranty laws, maybe that can help these people.

Mr. McParland: Any advice to used car clients to avoid this situation?

I didn’t know what they were doing with the cars until it was already done. The banks that made the loans can now go after the dealer group for fraud based on the value of the car vs the loan decisions.

So if shit gets sideways on this, well, I guess I’ll need to vacate myself from the premises.

DISCUSSION (13)

Tekamul > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 10:50

Oh shit, that dealer is all kinds of screwed.

With the many safety concerns linked to cars (crash ratings, recall systems, presumed accident avoidance benefits) everybody is going to be coming after them. Insurance companies, lenders, the state, the feds, and finally owners. Ouch.

Dru > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:01

Wow that's heavy. I thought that place was fairly on the level, but then again I never paid one lick of attention to their Altima inventory. Do you think your shop will be in the clear as this plays out?

Birddog > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:02

Did the dealer also add the other SL equipment too?

“SLs have more bells and whistles than Ss, like 2015s for example, which have heated steering wheels and seats, fog lights, mirror turn signals, leather seats, LED tail lights, and automatic windows”

Or did they just add Leather and an SL sticker?

How did the buyers Insurance company not catch it either?

Not that I’m defending the dealer here, they’re screwed. I’m just curious. When I go car shopping I know exactly what equipment should be in what I’m looking at and I run the VIN past the Insurer to see what it’ll cost me.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > Dru
05/13/2016 at 11:04

As far as I know yeah - they put the badges on them after we sent them home.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > Birddog
05/13/2016 at 11:06

They just put leather and an SL badge on them.

They’re a used car dealer that buys tons of cars at rental auctions. Their target market is people who want a new car but feel like they can’t afford one - when my credit score went over 650 I stopped getting targeted marketing mail from them.

Dru > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:08

Yeah, I mean it's not uncommon for people to want to add leather after the fact. I just hope it doesn't damage your reputation. You guys do good work.

Birddog > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:10

I get that part. Typically the Insurance Co would catch the mis-labeling though. Unless the Dealer has it’s own Insurance too.

Maybe I’m over thinking it. We have Dealers like that up here too. When I went through the Divorce and BK they were all over me. Like buying a new car would ease my suffering. LOL!

Stapleface > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:14

Wow, that’s some pretty shady shit. I’m curious if they sold them at the full value of the SL trim level. As was already mentioned, if I’m buying a car, I research the hell out of it. And I make sure what I’m buying has what it’s supposed to have. The dealer is screwed, but I think the customer also needs to keep themselves more informed, so shit like this doesn't happen.

Land_Yacht_225 > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:20

So if the difference in sale price is $5,000, how much are they paying for these sunroof and leather interior installs? What kind of profits are they seeing on the back end after putting the money into the cars? Seems like a lot of work to go to

One of my dreams is to get a 2014 PPV Caprice 6.0 and get a full leather interior, moonroof and a carriage roof installed so I could have a brand new Caprice Brougham. And I was thinking that would at least cost $5,000.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > Land_Yacht_225
05/13/2016 at 11:30

For the roof, we’d charge about $1000. For leather - if there’s something that fits the Caprice - it’d be around $900. The carriage roof would be $1500ish if you could find someone to do it.

Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection > Stapleface
05/13/2016 at 11:35

From what I gather, they were selling them as SLs at SL prices but were just S models with leather - not even seat heaters.

Another dealer we work with did a bunch of Altimas from the same sale - advertised them as Altima + leather, and sold the leather cars for $15000, and the ones without leather for $13,500.

Fair enough.

A ‘14 or ‘15 2.5 SL with about 35-40k miles usually sells for around $19-20k

Meatcoma > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:49

You would think the lending institutions would catch this when they got the VIN. Although maybe the dealer/lender are in on the scam.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > Steve is equipped with Electronic Fool Injection
05/13/2016 at 11:57

You guys should be fine. I mean, as you know putting leather in aftermarket is not unusual! If it was you guys wouldn’t be doing what you do. You had no idea he was going to scam people.

I’ve seen falsified ads plenty of times, the biggest problem is people not understanding the equipment on trim levels. I’ve seen a lot of Cadillac’s that someone crashed and rebuilt with whatever trunk they could find and I really think they just didn’t understand the little 4 after CTS or STS is only supposed to be on AWD vehicles. They just grab a clean replacement trunk from a junkyard CTS/STS and sell it.

Sounds like this was more dubious though.