CAPTAIN JUDY HELMEY
'Kicking Fish Tail Since 1956'
POB 30771
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA 31410
912 897 4921
912 897 3460 FAX
www.missjudycharters.com
July 21, 2008
Happy Fish Day!
Saltwater inshore, offshore, blue water fishing report, Freshies Suggestions, and 'Little Miss Judy's story! Thanks for reading! Captain Judy
'Little Miss Judy's Believe It or Not!'
Used Car Salesman
Part Two! Many parts to come!
Last week I touch base of just a few of the things that took place at daddy's old used car lot. Since I wasn't around for most of the goings on, I have had to rely here say! However, those old codgers must speak the truth, because it comes out so easy. The way I look at it, if all this information weren't true then they would have forgotten about it many years ago!
Daddy's specialty according to those that talk the talk was 'making cars look better than they really were.'
People purchasing didn't really want to know the under the paint details they just wanted the car to pass for the loan so that they could buy it. So therefore, it wasn't exactly the buyer that was getting taking advantage of it could have been the one loaning the money. According to daddy all of his cars were built to last just as long as the loan did. Apparently daddy had a hand in the financing of the automobiles also!
Back in the old days when odometer readings were numbers clicking and basically just turning over things were a lot different. It's a fact that not even the one owning the ear from the 'get go' knew what the real mileage was. The reason they didn't was because there was a lot of odometer numbers being turned back. My father wasn't the only person doing it. Most car dealers preformed this act with great precision while other didn't.
I can't say, 'My father taught me the trade of rolling back the numbers, because he didn't!' However, I saw it done so many times that I could have preformed this task while half asleep. Along the way of watching I learned a few value lessons especially when it came to purchasing a used car back in the good old days!
Car dealers or individuals that wanted their cars to have fewer miles just turned them back. It wasn't illegal unless you got caught and believe me during this time 'no one was looking!' At first I remember them just carefully removing said screws that held the dash in place so as to get to the odometer it self. Back in the day this wasn't a complicated thing to do. After a few dash side openings everyone was a 'whiz' at getting right to the source.
Once he got to the guts of the odometer, daddy basically pulled out the entire meter design. There were rolls of wheels in line together. All of the wheels had the numbers 0 to 9 on each wheel. At first as I remember there were six wheels total meaning your car once it reached 99,999 and 9/10, which is right up there with 100,000 miles it basically turned back to a 'big zero.'
My father always talked as he made these changes. According to him it was very important that you made sure that once the numbers were reset that they were straight. If they weren't straight 'those in the knowing would know' that the automobile's odometer has been tampered with. With this bit of information I knew how some determined whether or not the miles on the car was turned back. For this part it was simple 'if the numbers were crooked' the odometer had definitely been tampered with by a non-professional.
However, I must admit if daddy was the one doing the 'turning back' it was going to be hard to tell. It was an art with him for sure. According to my father something as simple as turning back odometer numbers could still offer up some real sales problems. For instance: You could roll the numbers too far back or it would look suspicious even if they weren't crooked. So therefore a graph was set up for how many miles should be on a car at a certain age. It went like this: If the car was five years old it probably should have at least 60,000 miles on it. According to my father once the numbers rolled over the potential customer knew the car had a lot of miles on it. So therefore in some cases such as this the odometer has to be turned up not turned back. A five-year old used automobile shouldn't have just 10,000 miles on it. However, there were times where you would run across a car with real low mileage. This was what daddy called a 'true low mileage used car!' Believe me there is lots more next week!
Thanks for reading!
Captain Judy