Yeah Labatt's is mediocre beer but at least here in Detroit its on tap everywhere and considered a domestic, I've gone down south and out of habit ordered one and been treated to paying high end import price for it.

When I worked in the parts dept at a GM dealership we would routinely see cars com in off lease with 30-40,000 miles with original oil filters and no service history. GM vehicles have a 100,000 mile powertrain warranty, on one occasion we had an Envoy come in knocking like crazy, 64,000 miles OEM oil filter, no service history at any GM dealer. When the tech pulled the valve cover the oil looked like roofing tar. When we asked the customer to produce oil change receipts, to show proper maintenance for warranty coverage on the new engine, he brought in 6-8 sequentially numbered invoices, dated months apart, hand written in the same handwriting, from a dubious quick lube place in inner city Detroit

It's the special 11.9% financing that sold me.

From current backwards:
01 Focus- Hermosillo, Mexico
06 Canyon- Shreveport, LA
94 Ranger- St. Paul, MN
92 Camaro- Van Nuys, CA
86 Omni- Belvidere, IL
86 Calais- Lansing, MI
87 Cherokee- Toledo, OH
87 Cavalier- Lordstown, OH

In the parts end where I work on most parts the markup is roughly 50% on most parts (less than standard retail markup of 67%). Warranty parts have a markup of 40% and wholesale parts have a markup of 25%. As to the discrepancy on parts prices noted above very large dealers are able to purchase parts on truckload programs for cheaper prices than ordinary dealers who do not have the capital or space for such purchases. Service is one area where profit can be made, our labor rate which is on the low end for the area, is $99 an hour of which only about $30-35 goes to the tech. Of course training and equipment eats up a good portion of that.

Having worked at dealerships for the last decade I can say that the margins are actually not all that great, especially compared to other retail buisnesses. The current store I work at sells Buick and GMC with a Nissan store two blocks west. On new cars the margins are shockingly small from an average of about $100 dollars on a Versa up to a couple thousand on a loaded Denali. Of course these cars have to be floor plan financed by the dealer but there are financial incentives from the manufactuer for meeting sales targets. Used cars are much more lucrative as dealers are able to get these cars through special auctions for low prices.

I moved on to being a tire technician, eventually becoming certified in brakes and front end work, where I learned quickly that this was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I moved on to Roush where I was a technician working on prototypes for Jeep and Truck engineering for Chrysler. From there I went back to being a technician at a tire store. After that chain, the boy's of pep, pulled out of Michigan, and anxious to change track I got a job on a parts counter at an Oldsmobile store. An old mechanic once told me that a bad mechanic makes an excellent parts guy and I find this to be very true. From there I moved on to a Pontiac store where I currently work, we now sell Buick, GMC, and have a Nissan store 3 blocks away. While doing all this I have been slowly pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at Wayne State in Detroit. I do find that working in the buisness has drained away some of my enthusiam for cars but it may just be the long dealership hours and declining income since 08. I do plan to stay in the industry after graduation however.

Wow that was long.

Well I grew up in the east end of Dearborn, MI so cars as a career seems more like the norm than anything else. My dad having been a part of Ford's first ever white collar layoffs in 1974 started at AMC in 1975 as a technician and eventually got an engineering degree. He has been there through Renault, Chrysler, Daimler, Cerberus, and now Fiat. Amazingly he had the same cubicle from 1985 through 3 years ago when they finally closed the old Plymouth rd Jeep and Truck headquarters, originally Nash hq, and moved him to Aurburn Hills. I also have family at GM and Ford. Suprisingly my father and many of the people I know in the industry are not really car people like us, my dad is content to drive late model SUV's that he doesn't have to work on. As for my path, I started loving cars at an early age in the early 80's when I was a child I could Identify every car on the road. My first job after high school was as a bodyman apprentice, I quickly learned that there was a measure of artistic skill involved in that that I was lacking.