Trust: the one vital ingredient.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat

I recently bought a car. It's always difficult for me. I'd rather take a beating than walk into a car dealership. Here's how it started:

Janet and I got married in 1960, and I brought an old 1953 Plymouth into the marriage. It wasn't too long before we decided that we should buy a new car. It would be the first new car that either of us had ever owned. We lived in Chicago at the time, and we looked around a lot and ended up in a Nash Rambler dealer on north Cicero near Irving Park.

I don't know exactly what happened to Rambler, but they are no longer in business; at the time it was one of the few new cars we could afford. It was about 8 o'clock in the evening, and it must have been winter because it was dark.

After spending 45 minutes or so with the salesman, we agreed to buy the car. He kept telling us to make an offer that he could take to his boss. We didn't know how to come up with a number, but he guided us to one. For the next 20 minutes he ran back and forth from a raised, glass room that had a bunch of important looking guys staring out at me.

We then went into another office of the financial guy who intimidated me by just being dressed like a million, French cuffs and all. I noticed that he had included the federal excise tax in the amount to be taxed. I wasn't sure what he was doing, but I knew that a tax on a tax was not right.

I saw out of the corner of my eye that they had pulled my car into the dealership and were emptying it into the new Nash.

Suddenly the amount to be financed had jumped from about $7K to $9K!

It took all of the courage I could muster to say, "I'm not doing this." They spent 15 minutes trying to change my mind. The last guy they sent in hollered at us, saying that we were just cheap and couldn't afford the car. I don't know what that was supposed to do.

Eventually, I drove out of that place with my old Plymouth and my stuff with nine guys staring at me from behind the plate glass of that dealership.

What gave me the courage to do that? I didn't trust those guys one ounce. I didn't want to do business with them. I knew it wouldn't be a good deal for...