If a team of mathematicians were to chart my automotive fortunes, they would note a stunning downturn that commenced in 1984, which happened to be the year I got married.
Until then, I was going through cars at a rate that averaged out to approximately three a year. For a while, I owned four cars at the same time: a pair of Volvo 544s, a BMW 2002 Tii rebuild project and a 1964 Pontiac Laurentian (bad handling, terrible gas mileage, but it had sofa-sized bench seats that were ideal for a young bachelor).
And so it went. I bought. I sold. I fixed. I raced. Sometimes I crashed. The cars rolled through my life in an unending parade, and I dreamed of the day when I’d make grown-up money and buy a genuine dream car like a Porsche 911 or a Shelby Daytona Coupe.
Peter Cheney and his wife Marian in a Porsche Boxster Spyder. Peter did not purchase the car.— Peter Cheney for The Globe and Mail
Then came the great automotive drought. Since my wedding day in April 1984, I have bought only five cars. And there’s a reason: I am married to a one-woman vehicle-sale cancellation department. My latest attempted purchase (a tiny sports car called a Lotus Exige) was instantly denied. But I expected that. My wife has vetoed a long list of deals that includes a Porsche Boxster Spyder, a Caterham Seven, a John Cooper Works Mini, a BMW M3, a Jeep Wrangler, a Formula Ford racecar and at least half a dozen different minivans. There have been many more, but you get my drift – I am married to Doctor No.
Don’t get me wrong. My wife is spectacular. And she has probably saved us at least half a million dollars over the past 26 years by throwing cold water on my often-ludicrous automotive plans – like buying a two-seat sports car with no trunk back in 1991, when the kids were still little, and we were trying to save money for a house.
But still I long for another cool car. And I now understand why I have failed in my endless quest to own one – I am the worst salesman ever.
I began to realize this a few weeks ago, when I got an e-mail from a reader who documented his strategy for getting his wife to let him buy a new Audi A4 (another car I tried to buy once, only to be turned down flat.) The reader was employing one of the oldest tricks in the book: To get the A4, he has spent months lobbying his wife for an A5, which costs more. As he put it in his e-mail to me: “To close the deal, to show I’m capable of compromise, I’ll accept an A4. Which is what I wanted.”
Why didn’t I think of that?
I have a lot of car guy friends, and I appear to be the least effective spousal salesman of the lot. Which explains why I am still riding around in a clapped-out Honda Accord, one of the dullest cars ever built. My sales technique sucks. If you want to see a master in action, look no further than my buddy Matt, who has managed to get dozens of hot cars approved by his wife.
Well, maybe not exactly approved. Matt’s approach to car purchasing could be compared to Genghis Khan’s real estate acquisition strategy – get what you want, sort things out later. While I was trying to talk my wife into a minivan back in the early nineties (unsuccessfully) Matt went out and bought a full-sized van plus a Ford Taurus SHO and a new motorcycle. Since then he’s gone through about half a dozen Mustangs (including a tricked-out SVT Cobra) plus a Volvo turbo, several pickup trucks and a BMW M3 convertible.
