Your Car Brand Says More About You Than You Think

Staying in the Jeep club 0:00

Steve Shaw: Welcome back, Dave Rogers. What's going on? What's on your mind tonight?

Dave Rogers: How you doing today, buddy?

Steve Shaw: I'm doing pretty good. Can't complain. I had to work, had to train, last week, so this week is what I like to call an admin week. I've got to catch up on all the paperwork and all the stuff I didn't get done. Last week was crazy. I might even make my way out of town to go on that vacation I started before my accident.

Dave Rogers: Nice. I was thinking, it's been a couple of weeks now since your Grand Wagoneer got totaled. Are you still in the Jeep cult? Did you jump ship yet? What's going on?

Steve Shaw: I will not be jumping ship. I'm going to remain a loyal Jeep enthusiast. I'll remain in the club. Even though the dealers don't necessarily know as much as I know, I'm learning everything I need to know about the Wagoneer, the '26 and possibly the '27. So I'm on the verge, and I might even upgrade to a Grand Wagoneer this time. I'm in the club. I'm in the cult. Once you're in the club, there are benefits. What does American Express say?

Dave Rogers: Yep.

Steve Shaw: Membership has its privileges. That's what it is.

Dave Rogers: It's funny you say that, because the Wrangler people are definitely a different breed. And you and I talked about the Mini customers. We talked about Mini, Subaru, Volkswagen. I think every brand has its own identity. When we were talking about Mini, you went down a rabbit hole. What did you learn? Because I know that was a little eye-opening on your end.

What Claude taught Steve about Mini owners 2:10

Steve Shaw: I had no idea. I'm not in the BMW world, and I'm not a Mercedes enthusiast, though I did see a Mercedes with gullwing doors that open up. That was the coolest thing I ever saw at a car dealership, and we should come back to that in a minute. I even worked at a Porsche store. I worked at Ferrari. I worked at all the high lines. I actually love driving my A8, but that's a whole other story. So I don't know anything about BMW, and I don't know anything about Mini Cooper. I had a Fiat. I can tell you about Fiat, because I drove a Fiat 500 Abarth for years. I loved it. Greatest car in the world.

So I don't know anything about the Mini Cooper customer, and then we start talking about CSI and the Mini customer versus the BMW customer. So who do I call? Who you gonna call? Claude. I get out Claude, I give him all the great prompts, tell him who he is and what I want to know. And I'm telling you, I learned so much about the Mini Cooper customer and the things they like. You make fun of me about my Jeep, but Mini Cooper is no different than Subaru or whatever. They're cults. I'm in the Jeep club, I'm in the Jeep cult. Both my Jeeps had a name. My bus had a name. My RV had a name.

You could say I'm really not even a car guy, but I do love cars. It's our ego, it's our brand, it's our identity in a lot of cases. My identity is wrapped up in my Wagoneer. And I think it's the same thing with the Mini Cooper people. Their identity is the Mini Cooper. And if we treat them like a BMW customer, they're going to be mad at us, because they're not. If I treat a Mini Cooper customer like a BMW customer, I might as well be treating them like a Honda owner as far as they're concerned. The cult is real.

One drive, two brands, two CSI scores 4:23

Dave Rogers: That's exactly right. When we started talking about it: we have the BMW and Mini store. Before my owners bought it, the old owner had the Mini store some miles away, in a different town, in its own building. You've probably seen the black buildings. Then I guess BMW let them put it all in one building. So they built a separate showroom area. It's on the main building, but it's kind of cut out, with its own little entrance. All the cars are in there. It's cute. When you go in there, it's specifically for Mini. The snack cabinet has the Mini cookies. It doesn't just have Chipwiches. It's got all those little things. But the service drive is one service drive.

When we started looking at the CSI, I said I think we should have a separate drive-through. I don't think you can mix them up, and I don't think you should have the same advisors. Maybe it's an overflow, but there should be a primary. Obviously we've got some work to do there, because the Mini customers are letting us know they're not happy. We're doing great in CSI with BMW, and then the Mini customers hate us. Same building, same everything, but they're not being treated the same. And you were saying I heard that Mini Cooper owners name their cars too.

Steve Shaw: Yes, they do. I can't remember the number, I have to ask my brother, but there's a top five list of Mini Cooper names. The females have their top five, and the guys have a top five names for their Mini Cooper. It's fascinating. Like we were saying: "Welcome to the dealership. I'm Steve, and you are? What's your baby's name?" And I'll put a hundred bucks on it that most of them are going to have a name for their baby. I love it.

Dave Rogers: But that's where the service advisor has to be drinking the Kool-Aid too. You've got to be in the cult, so you've got to ask that question: "What's your baby's name?" I learned years ago at a Chevy, Cadillac, Hummer store, I think in a training class I went to: the Chevy customers were regular blue-collar people. It wasn't BMW, it wasn't Mercedes. And some of those Tahoes and Suburbans were expensive. It's not like they were cheap cars. But they were your blue-collar people. If you walked out to their car and said, "That is an awesome color. My God, I love that," you could see that customer's demeanor change in ten seconds. "Isn't it? That's why I bought this car." It was the stupidest thing, but somebody taught us that, and we used to do it, and it was amazing how much the customers loved it. And I could see the BMW or the Mini customer the same way. If they have a name, what's the name? Ask them the question.

Value starts with the brand 7:51

Steve Shaw: Well, this podcast could go down about ten different roads. We've talked about Wagoneer service versus Chrysler service, about Lincoln and Ford in the same drive, and you talked about Hyundai and Cadillac. We do that class, and I did it with you guys a couple of years ago, and people look at me like I have two heads when I do it. Value. How do you build value? Value starts with the brand.

If I drive a Ford Mustang, or Steve drives a Jeep Wrangler, or the Mini Cooper, what's the ego? What's my personality? What's behind that? I'm a Jeep driver, I'm an adventure junkie. Chevrolet is like a rock. Ford is whatever Ford is anymore. GMC is professional grade. Our customers have bought that brand, and that's what's important to them. If we don't recognize that, the minute my Jeep goes in the shop, I'm not an adventure seeker anymore. And if you don't respect that, then you're a POS, and I'm going to give you bad CSI. It starts right here: why did I buy a goofy Wrangler, and why would I buy an orange one? Or why did you buy a Dodge Demon and a Hellcat? Because you want to go fast. And the minute your car's not out there going fast or looking cool, you're upset.

We say it all the time: your job isn't to fix my car. Your technician is going to do the mechanical work back there. And the customer has no idea whatsoever whether you're good with mechanics or not. They don't know your technical skill. They just assume every dealer is exactly the same. If I bring my car to a dealer, you're going to fix the technical side of it. Done. And most likely I could go to an independent shop if I tried. But I come to you to get fixed in the head. That's the ultimate job of the advisor. And if you don't recognize that I'm a Mini Cooper owner and I love my baby, or whatever brand I have, you've already lost.

Volkswagen and Subaru owners 10:09

Dave Rogers: You see it with other brands. Volkswagen is a very culty car. The Beetles, and you see the electric vans out there now, the little buses. I just saw an air-cooled Beetle the other day. You know those people are fanatics. You know they're in that cult. I talk to some of the guys in one Volkswagen store in particular, and I'm like, "You've got to get more into the brand. You just have to."

Because we become very technical. We become very sterile, like a doctor. A surgeon tries not to show emotions: "I'm going to cut you open and take out your gizzard." They don't want to get hurt; that's one of the reasons they do it. But when it comes to these cars, I think we become indifferent, because it's just a car. You've heard me say it before: it comes in that door broke, it should leave that door fixed. That's what I tell the guys in the shop. That doesn't mean I'm demeaning the car. That's as simple as it gets. But when it comes in the door broke, the advisor needs to treat that customer like their child has been hurt. You've got to have that empathy. I know it's tough, but you have to be an enthusiast with it.

And the Subaru owners are another one. They're the most unique customers I've ever seen. When COVID happened, all these senior citizens with white hair were in there with their masks on, getting their cars serviced, waiting room full of people. It was one of my busiest stores. I was shocked. I thought we'd have to close down that store. You go to an Acura store, there'd be one person there, and they'd be screaming at you if your mask was a little low. But these Subaru people were there. Now, if it snows, they stay home, because they don't want their car to slip off the road. They come in with their little folders. One guy was proud of the five head gaskets he'd had on his car when he traded it in. You look at them and think, "What the hell are you thinking?" But they love that car, and they love everything it stands for: the dogs, the animals, all the things they do. We have a Subaru store, and you go in there, and it's got a totally different feel than any other store. It's amazing.

Steve Shaw: It's love, man. It's love.

Saturn, Scion and the Toyota faithful 13:02

Steve Shaw: Nobody would believe me back in the day, when I was doing value-based training and talking about the different brands. It's a lifestyle. "Which one of these best fits your budget? Which one of these fits your lifestyle?" And the Kia people would go, "Well, we're Kia." No, no. Kia is a lifestyle brand, bro. I would make fun of them about the old commercials, the rats or the mice or whatever they were, running around, and they'd laugh, and finally it would open their eyes. That's what people identified with, that lifestyle. And with the Telluride and the Stinger, it's become a pretty awesome brand. But I don't think our people recognize that.

When I was with Saturn, and let's make fun of Steve, we all drank the Kool-Aid. I didn't care about the car particularly. I drank the culture and the Kool-Aid of Saturn and what it meant. It was a new thing, I was a new manager, and I bought in hook, line and sinker. My dealer owned a bunch of stores, and he didn't care about Saturn. To him, Saturn was Chevrolet or whatever else. I bought into it as an associate, and so all my people did, because I bought into it.

I liken it to Harley. If you go to a Harley store, there's nobody out there but Harley advisors, because Harley advisors are Harley owners 99% of the time. They get it. In any town, when I was out in my bus, I'd stop by the Harley store and get the poker chip and throw it in my little glass. The Harley people get that, and they expect it. I don't know the stat anymore, but it used to be that a Harley owner would spend $6,600 on accessories as soon as they bought their bike. It's got to be $10,000 now. People love their vehicles. But for us, I worked at Pontiac yesterday, and now I'm working for GMC, or I worked at GMC and now I'm at Hyundai. It's just another job. We're not seeing the customer side of it, until people really buy into that brand recognition: that's my ego, that's who I am.

Dave Rogers: I think Saturn is a great coaching tool and a great lesson for people, because that car was a piece of shit. It really was not a well-built car. But the people loved it. You couldn't tell them it was a piece of shit. You just fixed the car, and they were happy, and it was different.

Steve Shaw: You're hurting my heart right now, just so you know, because I had a 1992 SL2.

Dave Rogers: Listen, GM had some problems back then, so I'm not going to blame Saturn for it. Penske was going to buy Saturn when it was closing, and in Turnersville we were part of a team analyzing it and doing some of the backstory work while he was negotiating with Renault to put engines in them. Then he backed out at the end. But he was going to try to save it. We were doing some of the numbers behind the scenes, and it was interesting, because you got to learn a little more about the inner workings of a distributorship.

Anyway, they had some cool perks. You had one database, the GM DMS, so you wrote ROs in that DMS. Lexus had their own at one point too. I think that's the one Ross Perot made. So you could see what everybody else had done to the cars. You could put little notes in there, like we should do in our own DMSs: "Steve likes a chocolate-covered donut. He likes a chocolate éclair." And I remember the commercials with the mooch showing up for a chocolate donut. We laughed at it, because I'm in a Chrysler store, and that's the guy stealing bagels out of my waiting room.

Steve Shaw: And we gave it to him every day. We didn't care.

Dave Rogers: Right, you didn't care, which in hindsight was a great, novel idea. Toyota tried something like that with Scion.

Steve Shaw: Scion just didn't take like Mini Cooper did.

Dave Rogers: That was a flawed theory. I was with Toyota at the time, and we went to the training for it, and they basically told us the people who were going to buy these cars were broke-ass, but they don't know they're broke-ass. They want luxury on a budget. They want to be treated like kings and queens, but they're not going to spend a dime with you. That was the training they gave us, the ABCs of the XYZ generation. So we went in going, "Wow, you built a car line for a bunch of broke-ass mooches?" The way they trained us, it was destined for failure, because nobody in the dealership wanted to deal with these people.

But I used to laugh, because when I came from the domestics to my first job at a Toyota store, the Toyota people were very culty back in the day. A guy pulls in: "I've got a noise while driving." Okay, let's get in the car. We used to have a three-lane highway in front of the dealership, and in Jersey we have jug handles. So we're driving down the highway, I'm in the passenger seat, and the sun visor's flapping, the glove box is opening and closing because he's hitting bumps, and there are rattles all over the place. I'm like, "What kind of noise are we listening for?" He says, "You'll hear it when I go around a jug handle." So he goes around a jug handle at about 30 miles an hour, and you can hear this wheel bearing growl. And I'm holding on for my life, because the suspension's giving out. The car's a piece of crap at this point. The interior is falling apart. All he was worried about was that wheel bearing noise. I'm like, "Does any of this other stuff bother you?" "No, I don't hear any of that shit. Just get the wheel bearing fixed." The guy was happy as hell. He loved his Toyota because it started every day and drove every day. He didn't care about the fit and finish. Meanwhile, I came from a Chrysler store, where if a guy bought a car today and his windshield wiper blade flew off on day two, he wanted to go lemon law. It was hysterical.

Ford vs. Chevy, Nissan and Porsche 20:23

Steve Shaw: There's a guy out there, some channel, who makes fun of the different brands. I always laugh at the Jeep ones: "It's a good-looking car. Does it get good gas mileage? No. Does it ride well? No. Why do you have it?" "It's a Jeep, man." He does a great job of poking fun at every brand, especially the Cadillac Escalade owner. We should find that channel and watch it in training, so everybody understands that's what people are. We know we're this goofy person. Back to the Ford and Chevy rivalries of the sixties, seventies and eighties: I was a Ford guy. A Mustang was my thing. And if my brother had a Chevy, it was a family divided between brands.

Dave Rogers: It was like the Hatfields and McCoys, man. You got kicked out of the clan if you didn't have the right brand. And the people with Dodge Rams were a different breed. Chevy and Ford could duel it out, but we didn't mess with the Mopar guys.

Steve Shaw: Don't even. We had a Plymouth Valiant, and it would make that gear reduction sound when you started it. I'm like, "Is it going to start?"

Dave Rogers: Look at that. Without Claude, you did that too.

Steve Shaw: Hey, I know technical stuff. It had a gear reduction starter. I did that all on my own.

Dave Rogers: Nissan used to be a very culty car. I worked at a Nissan store in the early nineties, and I used to say where there's one Nissan in the family, there are a bunch more behind them. So you didn't want to piss off the one Nissan owner, because then the whole family didn't come in. People used to spend money on them all the time. We did very well with Nissan customers for years. I think the brand damaged that a little bit in the 2000s with some quality issues, and then from 2010 on, when they started going for volume and really just lying to people to sell cars, I think they burned the brand out. But those people loved those cars. I had a B210. You couldn't kill the thing. I bought it for fifty bucks. It was the biggest little four-door car I'd ever seen in my life. Then my ex-wife got T-boned going through an intersection, and it was like crying, because you could never replace it. I think it was still a Datsun at the time.

Think about the following they had. People used to come in all the time. We knew them by name. They'd throw you the keys: "Give me a call if it's over two G's." Sixty K service, timing belt, four-wheel brake job: "Just keep it under two G's and we're fine." We used to get that all the time. But you have to play into that cult. You really do. Porsche's another one, a high line obviously, but those people are fanatics about the car. One of my owners is a nut about his Porsches.

Steve Shaw: Por-sha, bro. It's Porsche.

Dave Rogers: I always get in trouble with that. He corrects me.

Steve Shaw: Hey, I took the Porsche class, and I know which way the crest has to point on the wheel. If you're a real Porsche experience advisor, the crest must point to the valve stem. If you don't know that, you can't work for Porsche. I did pay somebody a couple hundred bucks to take my Porsche exam, though, because it was three hours of my life I wasn't going to get back.

Dave Rogers: That's another one of those over-engineered vehicles, with over-engineered training. Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi: they're over-engineered to the nth degree. But if you like technology, power and all that fun stuff, that's your car. And when we bring up the Mini customers, we'll see you next week at the Mini store, or it'll be this week when this is airing. I'm looking forward to learning everything Bob has to share with me about what he found out about Mini customers. I can't wait.

Steve Shaw: It's freaking amazing. Like I said, I didn't know anything about it, and now I'm an expert, with all the word tracks: "How's your baby?" It's casual, it's fun, it's light, and it's not BMW. I'd imagine BMW is much more business professional. Mini Cooper is "I'm having a good time and enjoying life." Of course it's personal, but it shouldn't be that formal. It's a fun car. I'd liken it to my Fiat 500, probably one of the most fun cars I ever had. If you saw six-foot-four Steve Shaw get out of a Fiat 500, you wouldn't know what to do. It's the funniest thing you've ever seen. But I drove it around Key West, and I could park it anywhere on the island. I loved it. I traded it for my Wranglers.

Dave Rogers: You left one cult for another one. Look at you go.

GM tip: learn the culture of your brand 26:15

Dave Rogers: The only other thing to say is that Prius owners are a cult now: the Uber drivers and DoorDash people. They used to be cutting edge, but every time you see a Prius now, it's somebody delivering a package. And the only negative thing I'll say about Subaru owners is: is there a gas pedal in a Subaru? They never seem to go over forty-five miles an hour. My HR director's a Subaru owner, and I always ask her, "Does your right foot not work?" I've passed her on the highway doing sixty-five, two hands on the wheel. They always have two hands on the wheel. Safety first in a Subaru.

Steve Shaw: It's love, Dave. It's love.

Dave Rogers: I like all the brands. We don't have domestics in our group. I like them all. But when you drive as many hours as I do, there's a stigma to certain brands I'll stay away from. I will never get behind a Subaru, ever, because they'll slow me up.

So, GM tip of the day: if you're the GM of a dealer with a car line like Subaru or Mini Cooper, or you're a Volkswagen dealer, I don't care what dealer you are, learn the culture. Learn what the car is. Learn who your people are. Sometimes they're not just stopping in to buy a car. Sometimes they're part of the cult. You don't always think of that with Jeeps and Wranglers, but there's a culture there, and you need to make sure everyone gets it. Every manufacturer has a foundations class, an online training class when you start with that manufacturer. I know Toyota had it, and everybody has one. Make sure your new employees get immersed in it, because it's super important that you at least know enough that if you run into a fanatic, you know how to handle them. It might be somebody checking on price, or somebody buying a car who's not a fanatic, but you don't know until you start talking to them.

Car shows, barbecues and five-dollar keychains 28:30

Steve Shaw: If I can add something here, because I forgot about this in the beginning. Years ago I was calling on a Mercedes store, one of my big clients, and I was there on a Friday for some strange reason. On Fridays they had a car wash and a car show. You'd just show up at the dealership on any Friday, bring your car in and run it through the car wash. Then you'd park your car in their parking lot, and they had a Mercedes car show every Friday, for years. And this guy pulls in with his gullwing, gets it washed, and he's out in the parking lot detailing it, with the gullwing doors open. I was blown away. That was the coolest day ever, certainly at a car dealer. These guys actually cared enough to let customers show off their cars.

It's stuck with me for eight, nine, ten years: they loved their customers enough to allow that. Free car wash, fine, whatever. But show off your car and polish it in the drive. How many accessories did they sell that day? T-shirts, keychains, all that BS that doesn't move anywhere. Bob and I were talking about it: do we give away a keychain? Why don't I just hand you back your key on a Mini Cooper keychain? What's it cost, five bucks? Just those little things that let the customer do that. I couldn't even tell you how many accessories and T-shirts and cup holders and gizmos are sitting on our shelves rotting that we could sell or give away. That was a fun experience.

Dave Rogers: That's what it should be. If you have a car line like that, and you could do it with any car line, it doesn't really matter. You could have your Honda Passports outside and have a tailgate party in football season. There are things to do. You just have to get the culture there, and why not have some fun with it? Like you said, what are you giving away, a five-dollar keychain? We've got to start doing some of this stuff, and again, it starts from the top and works its way down. I understand a car's a car. They break, they come in that door broke, they go out that door fixed. I get it. But it's the time in between, when you're with the customer, that you've got to make feel special. And that starts at the top. You're not going to get people to be fanatics unless you are one yourself. That's my take.

Steve Shaw: I don't know if they still do it, but at the Harley store right down the street from me, we used to go to their barbecue on Saturdays. There was a band, there was always something going on. I think we went because they had a Jeep event. But there's always something happening at the Harley store. Band, beer, come on, bring it on.

Dave Rogers: Every Saturday. At the one by us, I knew the guy. He was the GM of a store in our group, left the group and went to work for Harley. He's showing his Saturday barbecue on Facebook and Instagram, and not only has he got barbecue and beer, he's got girls in bikinis and everything else. I texted him, "You couldn't do that at the dealership." He goes, "No, you couldn't. But in the Harley world, if you didn't do this, HR would fire you. Never mind, there is no HR here. We're having a blast." That's what they do, man.

Steve Shaw: "We're a bunch of Harley riders." That's awesome. Let's leave it on that note, man. I'll catch up with you soon. Later.

Dave Rogers: All right, brother. I'll talk to you.