8: Finance and other stories from my Ringwood days

When we needed to finance car, GMAC was the first port of call.

Well, for all new cars that is.

We had Lombard and others we could use if GMAC if a deal was a so-so type of deal.

As well as Lombard there was IAC, AGC, Custom Credit and Avco if you were desperate.

With GMAC if we got a contract approved and settled, we received an extra $5 Commission.

And believe me, that was handy.

I was on about $50 per week.

Commissions were structured for volume selling. 

Not like today.

Where "order takers" think he or she’s a GUN when they hit 10 sales.

The average used hack was selling 25 or even 30 if they were any good.

My pay scheme was 

$10 first five sales 

$15 the next 

$20 thereafter

But it was not retrospective.

Plus, in used cars they had a great system of paying bonuses 

$5 or $10 for selling old stock if it was 30 days 60 days and 90 days old.

So, if you sold 15 cars a week you got around $250 to $300.

Plus, if half of them were finance or old stock, you could add another $80 or so.

$250.00 per month retainer, a company car, petrol and around $300.00 per month in commissions, you could earn about $500.00 per month. 

For a 19-year-old that was quite good money.

Just married too. And desperate to save for the deposit on our first home.

It was really good money. But you had to put in the hard graft. 

GMAC were hard buyers of used cars. They only wanted the cream of the deals, the ones with minimum risk.

I think Pattos probably were on some form of recourse agreement.

To buy back any bad payers whose cars were repo’d.

So, we had to have a second-string finance source.

Ours was LOMBARD down near the railway station in Ringwood.

They were so good to deal with.

But back then, all finance deals were handled by the selling salesman.

All those credit apps, the little rate chart book you used to calculate the payments.

Then sit on the phone for hours ringing through the deals. It was just too time consuming for most guys. 

And you guessed it, lots of potential for mistakes.

Remember what I said earlier, most used car salesman had trouble just writing up the new car sales agreement and getting the numbers to balance was a miracle.

But I didn't mind doing finance deals as there was extra comms if they were through GMAC.

The other old stagers hated it and would flick pass finance stuff to me.

“hey Young Gordon! These are finance heads. Do you want to speak to them. Probably rotten eggs by the look of them”

Bring it on! Money, money, money!

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/