Point of fact: I’m a car whore. Always have been, always will be. However, we are seeing fewer and fewer color choices on modern cars than ever before.

Especially when a car is fully loaded, the colors found on the dealer lots are more likely as not to be black outside and black inside.

I have wondered this for months. Why so few colors on the ground? I have noticed that dealers are even reluctant to special order a car in a color that’s not black/black. Why?

Salesmen will tell you that it’s because the black/black combination is what customers want. I think that the truth is more on the egg side than on the chicken side of the question.

I was talking with John, my car whore buddy who has worked in the retail auto industry for years and he told me that black/black is ordered because it can ALWAYS be dealer-traded to get something else. This keeps the franchisee from having to keep a car color that might not sell right away, and that other dealers will be reluctant to trade for. It’s the least risky choice.

Surrounded by black/black, dark gray and black, dark blue and black, silver and black, with the occasional white and black – the consumers make a choice. Do they pay full retail and wait for a color, or do they just accept a car that is indistinguishable from pavement? You know, the roads on which we drive.

Black is like damp asphalt at night.
Silver is like concrete on a dreary day – so is silver/gold and its permutations
Many whites are more like dry concrete on a sunny day than white
Dark grays are like wet pavement, pavement on a cloudy day or icy pavement

Black interiors? Here in the Southwest, where the summer sun can warm your car to a temperature exceeding 180 in just an hour? Black is insane. In casual testing, a guy at an Audi store measured a black/black car at over 40 degrees HOTTER inside than a white/beige car.

Black interior is also just .. invisible. There’s nothing there.

So – your choices on the lot are pavement with black. Or, wait and pay more. Is it that the customers are REQUESTING this combination, or is it more accurate to say that they’re ACCEPTING this combination?

Travel to any other country in the world, and the cars on the roads will remind you of a fresh bag of jelly beans – black is only used on cars in professional service.

Why are we colorless? Why do we accept this?

Have you ever noticed that certain car makes have a distinctive smell to them?

Old Mercedes, for instance, smell like nothing else on wheels. Old BMWs also have their own cachet of hot oil, hemp, leather, rubber and glue.

My old Buick is now smelling like every old Buick since the 1950s, until the A/C gets a bite.

Yesterday, while shopping at Audi North Houston (if you’re at all interested in an Audi and anywhere south of the Red River, you should do your “trading” there) I kept noticing that every car had a nearly identical basic scent. Glue, plastic, leather finish – it’s the “Audi” smell.

VW, of course, has a nearly identical smell.

In comparison to the big Benzes we were looking at earlier, the Audi smell is very much redolent of something manufactured from component parts. It’s a machine, it has its own purpose and character.

The Mercedes “Supers” that we were visiting smelled like expensive leather and nylon carpeting. It was much like being in a high end furniture gallery with cheap carpets in an olfactory kind of a way.

I like a car that states its reason d’etre clearly. Audis are, to me, purposeful, honest, exquisitely designed and executed and remarkable. Mercedes and other big Germans are more focused on making you feel like you’re still at home in your favorite chair, I think.

Dear Shannon -

Please stop emailing me, or rather, please have your automated system stop emailing me.

You so clearly were not committed to answering the question of vehicle availability that I phrased in my sole, initial contact with your store that further communication is pointless.

Your automated system has now sent me five separate emails asking me to get excited about the . Vehicle.

I am unclear what a . Vehicle could be after further review of the Lincoln website.

You have never sent me a vehicle quote on the 2011 MKX Rapid Spec 101A with the Limited Edition Package.  I had sent you a request that included the specific RPO codes for what I wanted, but you never responded in any way to that request.  You also did never send me a vehicle quote on the . Vehicle.

It’s quite fine that you haven’t quoted me on the . Vehicle, as I have been unable to find information or pricing for that vehicle on Edmunds.com, or any other research website.

Your automated email system has absolutely atrocious (very bad) spelling, punctuation and grammar, and should be overseen by someone with at least a high school education.  Its construction clearly signals a level of emotional enthusiasm but lack of attention to detail that would perhaps be appropriate to someone selling used Yugo product on Craigslist, but is highly inappropriate when communicating with a customer you are trying to persuade to spend a 20% premium over what could be had down the frontage road at the Ford store.

If I overcome my mirth and derision for your store’s complete misunderstanding of internet communications, I may come into the store and ask for the elderly gentleman whose product knowledge, demeanor and focus on customer requests engendered my initial loyalty to your store in the making of my inquiry.

Given that you clearly do not read the emails that come to you through the dealer-contact portal, I take the liberty of both faxing a copy of this message to store management, and posting a copy on my blog so that the message is clearly conveyed.

Again, please cease peppering me with incessant, irrelevant, misspelled, non-specific automated emails.

Thank you kindly,

Douglas Hord

The other day, I took my car back to CarMax for some repairs under the service agreement. Seems they don’t just take your car in, you have to make an appointment, and tell them what they’re going to be doing, and then bring it BACK. You have to go in because they don’t answer the phone in the service department. Ever.

Well, I made an appointment to have these things done, and the service writer tells me that since I’ve nearly got 60,000 miles on the car, I need to schedule the 60,000 service for $440. What do I know? I remember when cars had to have brakes every 15,000 miles and their chassis fittings lubricated every 3,000 miles, and fell apart completely around 75,000 miles.

The morning of, I had a conflict. The snow fell, Yellowstone blew up, people voted Republican, SOMETHING. I started calling the CarMax folks at about 7:30 a.m. to tell them “I must reschedule.”

But, CarMax’s service department doesn’t answer their phone, remember? I never got through to anyone. Left several messages. No calls returned.

Weeks pass.

I still need the work done, but I’ve had the oil changed and the cabin filter replaced (which involved a great deal of jerking, prying, wedging and swearing, but was finally done.) The total cost for these two services was less than $80 (plus the skinned cuticles and knuckles.)

Yesterday, I had decided that trying to communicate with CarMax and getting the car TO CarMax to re-make the appointment and then take it back FOR the appointment was too much trouble, and I’d just take the car to reliable Poutous Auto Repair on Kelvin.

I ask the nice lady at the desk what the cost is for the 60,000 mile service. She asks one of the owners. He says “there is no such thing.” Uh, what? The CarMax guy was making it sound like it was a crucial thing – successful economic stimulus depended on my having this done RIGHT AWAY. Mike Poutous tells me “you probably need an oil change, a cabin filter replacement and a bunch of stuff checked. We’ll check it for you, and then call you and tell you what needs to be dne, but I’m not going to tell you I’m going to charge you four or five hundred dollars to do the 60,000 mile service when it’s an oil change and looking around under the hood.”

I came back to the office, and looked at my owner’s manual. At the 60,000 mile interval, GM tells me to:

* Change the oil
* Change the engine air filter
* Change the cabin air filter
* Rotate the tires

All of which have already been done, except for the “poke around under the hood.”

By the by, my “dealer,” David Taylor Cadillac, would like to collect $498.25 for this “service,” PLUS PARTS and state sales tax. They’ll install a PCV valve for me, and a fuel filter. Mind, the PCV valve and fuel filter would be EXTRA (and costs a buck sixty-nine and the fuel filter is seven bucks at AutoZone.) The fuel system “flush” involves putting a can of Wynn’s fuel system flush in the gas tank.

Caveat Emptor. Ya better shop around.