IMPORTED GEARS.

• Author: Stoker, Kevin

Don't judge a luxury car buyer by his coveralls.

ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, a "gentleman" wearing a pair of ragged cutoffs, a torn, greasy T-shirt and about a month's worth of beard walked into Exotic Imports in South Jordan and began looking at a new Lamborghini priced at $250,000 to $300,000.

"The rule of the house is that we don't turn anybody away," says Roy Wamboldt, general manager of Exotic Imports.

"There's no 'attitude' permitted here."

Wamboldt learned not to judge luxury car buyers by their dress while running an exotic car dealership in Maine. He found that many of the poorly dressed people visiting his showroom had just come off their yachts and hadn't taken time to change.

So, the salesman at Exotic Imports took time to show the Lamborghini to the gentleman in cutoffs. The man filled out a credit application and left it with Wamboldt to work out the details.

"Come to find out that gentleman was imminently qualified to drive the car," Wamboldt says. "He came in that Monday well-dressed, and we didn't know who he was. He bought a brand new Lamborghini. You never know who you're going to run into."

Ken Garff Volvo Sales Manager Kelly Railsback would agree. Having also worked at a local Lexus dealership, Railsback says he's amazed at the diversity of people buying expensive cars.

"You not only get the very wealthy," he says, "but I'm seeing more people who have raised their children and paid off the mortgage, who say, 'I've always wanted a nice car,' and come in and buy a Lexus."

Buyers also include young people making a relatively modest annual salary of $30,000 to $50,000 who are waiting to harvest a bumper crop of stock options. They backed off when the Nasdaq dropped several hundred points in April, helping to account for dismal sales that month and the next.

"The 'cash' people were still buying, but those financing or leasing were waiting to see what happened to the stock market," Railsback says.

With improvement in the stock market and confidence that Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve won't boost interest rates again, customers returned to the luxury car showrooms in late June, Railsback says. Business remained brisk into the fall. But for the year, sales of luxury cars are off 8 percent, he says.

Overall car sales, however, were up 3.8 percent in the first quarter of this year, allowing the State Tax Commission to collect more sales tax from car sales, $273.3 million, than from food sales, $269.3 million.

"The car...