I am not sure how it got onto my iPad browser, but there it was, at 3:03am, as I was waiting for kid #2 to fall back asleep, a Mother Jones article on the business of selling cheap cars to anyone for a ridiculous amount of money. It features the story of Detroit car dealer Don Foss. Allow me to say that I don’t know much about this Mother Jones website, their political views, or reputation, so please don’t hold that against me. What I do know is that this is an interesting article.
Automotive media typically looks at monthly and annual auto sales. You see how each company has had the best month/quarter/year ever selling the most boring cars to the dealerships, and how everyone is happy about that. But what you don’t see is the dirty truth, which in the past, and currently, has bubbled up, of dealers selling to the public. It’s not just cheap used cars but new, even pricey cars, that are getting sold to people who clearly cannot afford them. It’s a huge sum of money, so naturally it gets political. Lies, deceit, and manipulation, everything but a sex scandal is present. If you think the days of scummy car sales are over, you’re wrong.
Source: Mother Jones
Of Subprime Loans, Cars, Money, and Lawyers
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An expensive way to buy a car,some people have no choice if they want wheels.
These people add all types of fess,not unlike a payday lender. -
as a dedicated liberal weenie, i like Mother Jones. it’s most famous in recent years for having leaked the infamous Mitt Romney 47% video. besides that i generally find their coverage thoughtful and levelheaded (if one can accept their leftward tilt). i will grant that their bloggier blog posts aren’t held to the same standards as the stuff from the print edition.
i think even if one didn’t agree with its politics, one could perceive MoJo as being much like BuzzFeed – mostly chaff, with the occasional surprising piece of solid investigative journalism, like this one. the nature of institutions like BHPH lots, payday lenders, etc is pretty blatantly exploitative, and distaste for them seems to transcend party lines. -
This is amazingly harsh reading. One would expect such companies to be able to exist in a regulatory vacuum for a couple of years, but not decades…business build on the morality of sociopaths should only thrive for a limited amount of time.
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The villains of the article make me so angry I can’t even think.
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I can help enlighten Kamil anyway on the Mother Jones perspective with some Old Country analogies. We all know any industry from medical to law to yes, even car sales, has some bad apples. From Mother Jones’ perspective they’d rather see cars sold as in historical Poland or the USSR, only on “special tickets” for Party Members (who after all NEED cars) or at such low “official govt. set prices” as to ensure there would be no actual cars available at those prices, but everyone should feel good because “everyone can afford a car”. Humor added but that is the gist. Does MJ even support unrestricted private car ownership?
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