No Gimmicks, Just Good Clean Used Cars?

    “No Gimmicks, Just Good, Clean, Used Cars” has been the motto of Leonard Evans Used Car Superstore for over 50 years on the corner of Wenatchee Ave. and Maple St. here in Wenatchee WA.   As this slogan suggests,  the relationship between gimmicks and used car sales is a long-standing tradition in America invoking images of obnoxious advertising, tacky tweed suits, and greasy, comb-over hair-dos.  Leonard Evans has attempted to use this advertising slogan to throw off such images as they relate to this seemingly upstanding family-owned business.  Though certain marketing “gimmicks” are innate to all used car sales and few are worse than good business strategy,   the skeletons in Leonard Evans’ closet and the quiver full of arrows used against the unsuspecting public are enough to nauseate even the most resilient car buyer.   “Full disclosure” is a term one might be jabbed with by a sales shark at this dealership.  “Full disclosure” of just enough to get you out the door and down the road, even if it is only a mile or two, and they know it.  Sales representatives are taught what to say to get a customer out the door with a check engine light on, a slipping transmission, a bad battery that was jumped that morning, a slow leak in a tire, or that eerie vibration that promises high-dollar work in the near future.  “Assisting” customers with illegal straw financing, as well as coaching them on how to respond to bank interviews after signing is another Leonard Evans trick to get more lemons out the door for people who can’t afford a car.  After all, if the deal’s closed, it’s the bank that suffers, not the dealership.  Hidden behind these all too common used car dealership gimmicks, however, is something more sinister yet. 
    If it seems that Garrett Evans, owner, couldn’t do worse to the unsuspecting Wenatchee public, he did.  The sales staff is reportedly up to 70% made up of felons. Not long ago, he hired Adrian “A.G.” Dillard as a sales manager because of his proven ability to improve the marketing of his dealership.  Evans, however, has knowingly covered up the fact that Dillard is the very same sales manager who has served 8 months in jail, because he formed and carried out a plot to steal $100,000.00 from an obviously mentally ill customer at the Huling Bros. dealership in Seattle in 2007. The plot involved seven other sales staff members in his scheme.  Huling Bros., was sold under new management and later was forced to close after an inability to recover its reputation after the incident.* The risk of bringing this kind of dirty business to Wenatchee is appalling. 

*http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/zoom/html/2004435806.html