“
How can this be your car? (Nick)
Well, I wrote a really big check that didn’t bounce to the dealer and then the most amazing thing happened…the salesman gave me the keys and let me take it home. It was like magic. (Acheron)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
“
I listened to the men's voices outside, muted by my car walls.
"...went at it with a flamethrower in the online video. Didn't even pucker the paint."
"Of course not. You could roll a tank over this baby. Not much of a market for one over here. Designed for Middle East Diplomats, arm dealers, and drug lords mostly."
"Think she's something?" the short one asked in a softer voice. I ducked my head, cheeks flaming.
"Huh," the tall one said. "Maybe. Can't imagine what you'd need missile-proof glass and four thousand pounds of body armor for around here. Must be headed somewhere more hazardous."
Body armor. Four thousand pounds of body armor. And missle-proof glass? Nice. What had happened to good old-fashioned bulletproof?
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, #4))
“
Now off the escalator and into the casino, big crowds still tight around the crap tables. Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they’re real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them – still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last- minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson
“
They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they’re real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them—still
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
“
I'm here to tell niggas it ain't all swell.
There's Heaven then there's Hell niggas
One day your cruisin' in your seven,
Next day your sweatin', forgettin' your lies,
Alibis ain't matchin' up, bullshit catchin' up
Hit with the RICO, they repoed your vehicle
Everything was all good just a week ago
'Bout to start bitchin' ain't you?
Ready to start snitchin' ain't you?
I forgive you. Weak ass, hustlin' just ain't you
Aside from the fast cars
Honeys that shake they ass in bars
You know you wouldn't be involved
With the Underworld dealers, carriers of mac-millers
East coast bodiers, West coast cap-peelers
Little monkey niggas turned gorillas.
”
”
Jay-Z (Decoded)
“
I just don’t want to die without a few scars, I say. It’s nothing anymore to have a beautiful stock body. You see those cars that are completely stock cherry, right out of a dealer’s showroom in 1955, I always think, what a waste.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. (I'll sell my car," I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. "Whatever it takes.") This was slightly less true of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group-- jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. "Be good to her," Julian tells Clay. "She really deserves it." The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. Smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the actor delivered that line, I then glanced at Blair in the darkness of the screening room.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis (Imperial Bedrooms)
“
Drug overdose had already taken the lives of 300,000 Americans over the past fifteen years, and experts now predicted that 300,000 more would die in only the next five. It is now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of fifty, killing more people than guns or car accidents, at a rate higher than the HIV epidemic at its peak.
”
”
Beth Macy (Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America)
“
If it’s revealed that I was in the car, what will that make me? The thug ghetto girl with the drug dealer?
”
”
Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give)
“
Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they’re real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them—still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
“
From now on, I’m telling everyone I meet I’m in insurance. Or I’m a car dealer. Better yet—a Republican. That way, when they accuse me of doing the Devil’s work, at least there will be some validity to their claims.
”
”
Mary Carter (Accidentally Engaged)
“
In chili’s hand were his car keys, Ray-bans and Marlboros, without which he wouldn't leave his bathroom. Chili drank only black coffee and neat Jack Daniel’s; his suits were Boss, his underwear Calvin Klein, his actor Pacino. His barber shook his hand, his accountant took him to dinner, his drug dealer would come to him at all hours and accept his checks.
”
”
Hanif Kureishi (The Black Album)
“
It’s not the drug that causes the junkie it’s the laws that causes the junkie because of course the drug laws means that he can’t go and get help because he is afraid of being arrested. He also can’t have a normal life because the war on drugs has made drugs so expensive and has made drug contracts unenforceable which means they can only be enforced through criminal violence.
It becomes so profitable to sell drugs to addicts that the drug dealers have every incentive to get people addicted by offering free samples and to concentrate their drug to the highest possible dose to provoke the greatest amount of addiction as possible.
Overall it is a completely staggering and completely satanic human calamity. It is the new gulag and in some ways much more brutal than the soviet gulag. In the soviet gulags there was not a huge prison rape problem and in this situation your life could be destroyed through no fault of your own through sometimes, no involvement of your own and the people who end up in the drug culture are walled off and separated as a whole and thrown into this demonic, incredibly dangerous, underworld were the quality of the drugs can’t be verified. Were contracts can’t be enforced except through breaking peoples kneecaps and the price of drugs would often led them to a life of crime.
People say “well, I became a drug addict and I lost my house, family, and my job and all that.” It’s not because you became a drug addict but, because there is a war on drugs which meant that you had to pay so much for the drugs that you lost your house because you couldn't go and find help or substitutes and ended up losing your job. It’s all nonsense. The government can’t keep drugs out of prisons for heaven’s sakes. The war on drugs is not designed to be won. Its designed to continue so that the government can get the profits of drug running both directly through the CIA and other drug runners that are affiliated or through bribes and having the power of terrorizing the population.
To frame someone for murder is pretty hard but to palm a packet of cocaine and say that you found it in their car is pretty damn easy and the government loves having that power."
-Stefan Molyneux
”
”
Stefan Molyneux
“
She went again and bought this car, too, from an antique dealer. He almost gave it away, saying it will never run again. It has the old days’ engine, the kind you don’t find in this era. A change of engines and batteries, a new set of all-terrain-tires, some safety trackers, sensors, and, well, a whole list of other things with 300% luck to make it run again through the Junk Land—the land outside the cities where it’s only ruins and rubble. Needs hard work, yes. But Kusha instantly liked the color of its body, the moment she saw it—a sort of green with greyish tint, and a good load of rust.
”
”
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
“
Most car dealers make the majority of their profits from servicing cars. They treat vehicles like a subscription service, expecting people to visit their service centers multiple times a year for many years. This is the main reason dealerships have fought to block Tesla from selling its cars directly to consumers.fn15
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
“
what mattered most, as I came to realize, was who’d lived in Vegas the longest, which was why the knock-down Mexican beauties and itinerant construction heirs sat alone at lunch while the bland, middling children of local realtors and car dealers were the cheerleaders and class presidents, the unchallenged elite of the school.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
“
Parents, you need to understand something: someone is going to teach your kids about money. It will either be you, or it will be a shady car dealer, a credit card pusher on your child’s first day at college, a get-rich-quick infomercial pitchman, or just some clown who’s after their money. If you want to protect your kids, you need to send them out into the world with some knowledge.
”
”
Dave Ramsey (Dave Ramsey's Complete Guide To Money: The Handbook of Financial Peace University)
“
This Porsche was a gift from an antique car dealer,” Scythe Curie explained to her. “He wanted immunity?” Citra asked, assuming the man’s motive. “On the contrary. I had just gleaned his father, so he already had immunity.” “Wait,” said Citra. “You gleaned his father, and he gave you a car?” “Yes.” “So he hated his father?” “No, he loved his father very much.” “Am I missing something?
”
”
Neal Shusterman (Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1))
“
All too often high-income-producing UAWs spend countless hours studying the market—but not the stock market. They can tell you the names of the top auto dealers, but not the top investment advisors. They can tell you how to shop and spend. But they can’t tell you how to invest. They know the styles, prices, and availability at various car dealers. But they know little or nothing about the various values of equity market offerings. As
”
”
Thomas J. Stanley (The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy)
“
executive and nonexecutive, every day. Yet few people are even aware of it. When asked whether making decisions would deplete their willpower and make them vulnerable to temptation, most people say no. They don’t realize that decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at their colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket, and can’t resist the car dealer’s offer to rustproof their new sedan.
”
”
Roy F. Baumeister (Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength)
“
If I seem to be over-interested in junk, it is because I am, and I have a lot of it, too—half a garage full of bits and broken pieces. I use these things for repairing other things. Recently I stopped my car in front of the display yard of a junk dealer near Sag Harbor. As I was looking courteously at the stock, it suddenly occurred to me that I had more than he had. But it can be seen that I do have a genuine and almost miserly interest in worthless objects. My excuse is that in this era of planned obsolescence, when a thing breaks down I can usually find something in my collection to repair it—a toilet, or a motor, or a lawn mower. But I guess the truth is that I simply like junk.
”
”
John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
“
I just don't want to die without a few scars, I say. It's nothing anymore to have a beautiful stock body. You see those cars that are completely stock cherry, right out of the dealer show room in 1955, I always think, what a waste.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
Iacocca made his pitch: He wanted Ford to build the Fiesta, but with a Honda engine and transmission in it. Honda was delighted: He would like nothing better than this joint production with an American company, whose very name he revered. The price of the Japanese parts would be only $711. He could deliver 300,000 and do it quickly. Iacocca was even more delighted; he had an instant car and an unbeatable one at that. It could be in the dealers’ showrooms in only eighteen months.
”
”
David Halberstam (The Reckoning)
“
Watching them, Harmony felt too shaken to take a step. Eddie and Sheba were young; but she herself had become old. Even if she wasn’t particularly old if you just counted years, the fact was years were no way to count. Happenings were the way to count, the big happening that separated her from youth or even middle age was the death of her daughter, Pepper. That death made her realize that life, once you got around to producing children, was no longer about being pretty or having boyfriends or making money – it was about protecting children; getting them raised to the point where they could try life as adults. It didn’t have to be just children that come out of your body, either. It could be anyone young who needed something you had to give. Some grown men were children; some grown women, too. Harmony knew that she had spent a good part of her life, taking care of just such men. But now that she felt old she didn’t think she wanted to spend much more of her energy protecting men who had had a good chance to grow up, but had blown it. If she never had another boyfriend – something she had been worrying about, on the plane – it might be a little dull in some areas, like sexual areas, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
What would be the end of the world would be to let some little girl like Sheba get in the car with a bad man who would make a U-turn across the street and kill her right there in front of the pay phones, where pimps and crack dealers were making their calls.
”
”
Larry McMurtry (The Late Child)
“
Now off the escalator and into the casino, big crowds still tight around the crap tables. Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they’re real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them—still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
“
What do you get yourself into every weekend?” I just don’t want to die without a few scars, I say. It’s nothing anymore to have a beautiful stock body. You see those cars that are completely stock cherry, right out of a dealer’s showroom in 1955, I always think, what a waste.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
“
The price of a Prius at a dealership in Princeton, New Jersey, is not five times higher than what you would pay for a Prius in Hackensack and a Prius in New Jersey is not twice as expensive as one in New Mexico. The price of that car at the very same dealer doesn’t depend on your employer, or if you’re self-employed or unemployed. Why does it matter for healthcare?
”
”
Elisabeth Rosenthal (An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back)
“
You mean when you called Khalil a drug dealer?"
He nods. "Even if he was, I knew that boy. Watched him grow up with you. He was more than any bad decision he made," he says. "I hate that I let myself fall into that mind-set of trying to rationalize his death. And at the end of the day, you don't kill someone for opening a car door. If you do, you shouldn't be a cop.
”
”
Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give (The Hate U Give, #1))
“
He never approves of anything I do,” Kusha says from the garage, hiding her frown. She gets all her old cars and tools from places you don’t want your daughters to visit. And Rashad Gaumont certainly doesn’t want her to visit Magic Mama, the not-enough-evolved, middle-aged man from the Old City. “He’s not a citizen! He lives in a bus! So what if he made it himself? So what if he teaches you about machines? Don’t meet him.”
“Why?” Kusha used to ask Rashad, and she’d always get the same answer: “The unevolved kind brings chaos and wars.”
Kusha didn’t listen. She went again and bought this car, too, from an antique dealer. He almost gave it away, saying it will never run again. It has the old days’ engine, the kind you don’t find in this era. A change of engines and batteries, a new set of all-terrain-tires, some safety trackers, sensors, and, well, a whole list of other things with 300% luck to make it run again through the Junk Land—the land outside the cities where it’s only ruins and rubble. Needs hard work, yes. But Kusha instantly liked the color of its body, the moment she saw it—a sort of green with greyish tint, and a good load of rust.
”
”
Misba (The High Auction (Wisdom Revolution, #1))
“
In the year 2000, wars caused the deaths of 310,000 individuals, and violent crime killed another 520,000. Each and every victim is a world destroyed, a family ruined, friends and relatives scarred for life. Yet from a macro perspective these 830,000 victims comprised only 1.5 per cent of the 56 million people who died in 2000. That year 1.26 million people died in car accidents (2.25 per cent of total mortality) and 815,000 people committed suicide (1.45 per cent).4 The figures for 2002 are even more surprising. Out of 57 million dead, only 172,000 people died in war and 569,000 died of violent crime (a total of 741,000 victims of human violence). In contrast, 873,000 people committed suicide.5 It turns out that in the year following the 9/11 attacks, despite all the talk of terrorism and war, the average person was more likely to kill himself than to be killed by a terrorist, a soldier or a drug dealer.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Consider the level of car-purchasing knowledge Dr. South has recently acquired that will never pay capital gains or real dividends or enhance the productivity of his business. He now has knowledge about every Porsche dealer within a four hundred-mile radius of his home. Dr. South also can tell you immediately the dealer’s cost on nearly every Porsche model, the cost of options and accessories, and the performance characteristics of most models. It takes much time and effort to acquire such information. Dr.
”
”
Thomas J. Stanley (The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy)
“
IN THE 1960S, WHEN I became a beat cop in San Diego, manufacturing, selling, possessing, or using “dangerous drugs” or “controlled substances” were all violations of the law. But there was no “war,” per se, on drug-law violators. We made the occasional pot bust, less frequently a heroin or cocaine pinch. Drug enforcement was viewed by many of us almost as an ancillary duty. You’d stumble across an offender on a traffic stop or at a loud-party call. Mostly, you were on the prowl for non-drug-related crime: a gas station or liquor store stickup series, a burglary-fencing ring, an auto theft “chop shop” operation. Undercover narcs, of course, worked dope full time, chasing users and dealers. They played their snitches, sat on open-air markets, interrupted hand-to-hand dealing, and squeezed small-time street dealers in the climb up the chain to “Mister Big.” But because most local police forces devoted only a small percentage of personnel to French Connection–worthy cases, and because there were no “mandatory minimum” sentences (passed by Congress in 1986 to strip “soft on crime” judges of sentencing discretion on a host of drug offenses), and because street gangs fought over, well, streets—as in neighborhood turf (and cars and girlfriends)—not drug markets, most of our jails and prisons still had plenty of room for violent, predatory criminals. The point is, although they certainly did not turn their backs on drug offenses, the country’s police were not at “war” with users and dealers. And though their government-issued photos may have adorned the wall behind the police chief’s desk, a long succession of US presidents stayed out of the local picture.
”
”
Norm Stamper (To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America's Police)
“
I’ve been around gamblers since I was six years old. I’ve seen it all: smart money, stupid money, sharps, half-sharps, suckers, and squares. I’ve run into every sort of hustler, scuffler, con man, and bullshit artist you can imagine. I’ve dealt with killers, drug dealers, celebrities, billionaires, and a thug-fest of would-be tough guys. For the longest time, I could not resist that sweet voice called Action whispering in my ear, drawing me in, pulling me down. For years, I lived what gamblers in the South like to call a “chicken or feathers” existence; flush one day, dead broke the next. I’ve lost cars, houses, businesses, and marriages. I gambled until I had all your money, or you had all of mine.
”
”
Billy Walters (Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk)
“
Okay, let me get this straight.” Annette stood in the doorway staring at us. “First, you al meet Roxie, now that’s after Indy got kidnapped a couple times, shot at and car bombs were exploding. And after Jet got shot at, kidnapped a couple of times and almost raped. Then came Roxie and I was around when Roxie was assaulted at a haunted house and held hostage at a society party after, of course, she got kidnapped. I leave and new girl Jules starts a vigilante war against drug dealers and ends up in ICU
with two bul et holes in her. Then new, new girl Ava survives a drive-by, gets kidnapped repeatedly and ends up on a wild ride, exiting a wrecked car right before it explodes.
Now all of you are getting shot at… at the same time?
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Rock Chick Reckoning (Rock Chick, #6))
“
...because a man on the scent of the White House is rarely rational. He is more like a beast in heat: a bull elk in the rut, crashing blindly through the timber in a fever for something to fuck. Anything! A cow, a calf, a mare--any flesh and blood beast with a hole in it.The bull elk is a very crafty animal for about fifty weeks of the year; his senses are so sharp that only an artful stalker can get within a thousand yards of him...butwhen the rut comes on, in the autumn, any geek with the sense to blow an elk-whistle can lure a bull elk right up to his car in ten minutes if he can drive within hearing range.
The dumb bastards lose all control of themselves when the rut comes on. Their eyes glaze over, their ears pack up with hot wax, and their loins get heavy with blood. Anything that sounds like a cow elk in heat will fuse the central nervous systems of every bull on the mountain. They will race through the timbers like huge cannonballs, trampling small trees and scraping off bloody chunks of their own hair on the unyielding bark of the big ones. They behave like sharks in a feeding frenzy, attacking each other with all the demented violence of human drug dealers gone mad on their own wares.
A career politician finally smelling the White House is not Much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way; and anything he can't handle personally, he will hire out--or, failing that, make a deal. It is a difficult syndrome for most people to understand, because so few of us ever come close to the kind of Ultimate Power and Achievement that the White House represents to a career politician.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson
“
I’m really enjoying my solitude after feeling trapped by my family, friends and boyfriend.
Just then I feel like making a resolution. A new year began six months ago but I feel like the time for change is now. No more whining about my pathetic life. I am going to change my life this very minute. Feeling as empowered as I felt when I read The Secret, I turn to reenter the hall.
I know what I’ll do! Instead of listing all the things I’m going to do from this moment on, I’m going to list all the things I’m never going to do! I’ve always been unconventional (too unconventional if you ask my parents but I’ll save that account for later). I mentally begin to make my list of nevers.
-I am never going to marry for money like Natasha just did.
-I am never going to doubt my abilities again.
-I am never going to… as I try to decide exactly what to resolve I spot an older lady wearing a bright red velvet churidar kurta. Yuck! I immediately know what my next resolution will be; I will never wear velvet. Even if it does become the most fashionable fabric ever (a highly unlikely phenomenon)
I am quite enjoying my resolution making and am deciding what to resolve next when I notice Az and Raghav holding hands and smiling at each other. In that moment I know what my biggest resolve should be.
-I will never have feelings for my best friend’s boyfriend. Or for any friend’s boyfriend, for that matter. That’s four resolutions down. Six more to go? Why not? It is 2012, after all. If the world really does end this year, at least I’ll go down knowing I completed ten resolutions. I don’t need to look too far to find my next resolution. Standing a few centimetres away, looking extremely uncomfortable as Rags and Az get more oblivious of his existence, is Deepak.
-I will never stay in a relationship with someone I don’t love, I vow. Looking for inspiration for my next five resolutions, I try to observe everyone in the room. What catches my eye next is my cousin Mishka giggling uncontrollably while failing miserably at walking in a straight line. Why do people get completely trashed in public? It’s just so embarrassing and totally not worth it when you’re nursing a hangover the next day. I recoil as memories of a not so long ago night come rushing back to me. I still don’t know exactly what happened that night but the fragments that I do remember go something like this; dropping my Blackberry in the loo, picking it up and wiping it with my new Mango dress, falling flat on my face in the middle of the club twice, breaking my Nine West heels, kissing an ugly stranger (Az insists he was a drug dealer but I think she just says that to freak me out) at the bar and throwing up on the Bandra-Worli sea link from Az’s car.
-I will never put myself in an embarrassing situation like that again. Ever.
I usually vow to never drink so much when I’m lying in bed with a hangover the next day (just like 99% of the world) but this time I’m going to stick to my resolution.
What should my next resolution be?
”
”
Anjali Kirpalani (Never Say Never)
“
I am assured that this is a true story. A man calls up his computer helpline complaining that the cupholder on his personal computer has snapped off, and he wants to know how to get it fixed. “Cupholder?” says the computer helpline person, puzzled. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m confused. Did you buy this cupholder at a computer show or receive it as a special promotion?” “No, it came as part of the standard equipment on my computer.” “But our computers don’t come with cupholders.” “Well, pardon me, friend, but they do,” says the man a little hotly. “I’m looking at mine right now. You push a button on the base of the unit and it slides right out.” The man, it transpired, had been using the CD drawer on his computer to hold his coffee cup. I bring this up here by way of introducing our topic this week: cupholders. Cupholders are taking over the world. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of cupholders in automotive circles these days. The New York Times recently ran a long article in which it tested a dozen family cars. It rated each of them for ten important features, among them engine size, trunk space, handling, quality of suspension, and, yes, number of cupholders. A car dealer acquaintance of ours tells us that they are one of the first things people remark on, ask about, or play with when they come to look at a car. People buy cars on the basis of cupholders. Nearly all car advertisements note the number of cupholders prominently in the text. Some cars, like the newest model of the Dodge Caravan, come with as many as seventeen cupholders. The largest Caravan holds seven passengers. Now you don’t have to be a nuclear physicist, or even wide awake, to work out that that is 2.43 cupholders per passenger. Why, you may reasonably wonder, would each passenger in a vehicle need 2.43 cupholders? Good question. Americans, it is true, consume positively staggering volumes of fluids. One of our local gas stations, I am reliably informed, sells a flavored confection called a Slurpee in containers up to 60 ounces in size. But even if every member of the family had a Slurpee and a personal bottle of
”
”
Bill Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away)
“
We'd reached the parking lot. Alex stopped.
"You drive to school?" I demanded.
He gestured me ahead of him through the break in the chain fence. "We don't all live five blocks away," he shot back.
"It's eight, actually."
"Fine,eight. And sometimes I walk."
I pictured the stretch between Willing and Society Hill, where I knew he lived somewhere near Sadie. It was quite a distance, and not a particularly scenic one, especially at seven thirty in the morning. "Yeah? When was the last time?"
He didn't answer immediately, leading the way now between the parked cars. He passed a big Jeep that still had its dealer plates, a low-slung-two-door Lexus, and a sick black BMW that all looked like just the sort of cars he would own. "April of last year," he admitted finally. "But it pissed rain on me the whole time, so that's gotta count for something." He stopped by the dented passenger door of an old green Mustang. "Your carriage, my lady."
"Really? This is your car?"
The door made a very scary sound when he opened it. "It's clean," he snapped, and I realized he'd totally missed my point.
"It's amazing.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
Decouplers often trip up on this step in two ways. First, they are overly generic in articulating the CVC. When mapping the process of buying a car, auto executives tend to describe it as: feel the need to buy car > become aware of a car brand > develop an interest in the brand > visit the dealer > purchase the car. This is a start, but it is not specific enough. Decouplers must ask: When do people actually need a new car? How exactly do people become aware of car brands? How do people become interested in a make or model? And so on. The generic process of awareness, interest, desire, and purchase isn’t specific enough to help. Decouplers also flounder by failing to identify all the relevant stages in the value chain. For the car-buying process, a better description of the CVC might be: become aware that your car lease will expire in one month > feel the need to purchase a new car > develop a heightened interest in car ads > visit car manufacturers’ websites > create a set of two or three brands of interest > visit third-party auto websites > compare options of cars in the same category > choose a model > shop online for the best price > visit the nearest dealer to see if they have the model in stock > see if they can beat the best online price > test-drive the cars > decide about financing, warranty, and other add-ons > negotiate a final price > sign the contract > pick up the car > use it > wait for the lease to expire again. With this far more detailed CVC, we can fully appreciate the complexity of the car-buying
”
”
Thales S. Teixeira (Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption)
“
I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster. The boys who stood out on Garrison and Liberty up on Park Heights loved this music because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies. I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much. “Keep my name out your mouth,” they would say. I would watch them after school, how they squared off like boxers, vaselined up, earrings off, Reeboks on, and leaped at each other.
I felt the fear in the visits to my Nana’s home in Philadelphia. You never knew her. I barely knew her, but what I remember is her hard manner, her rough voice. And I knew that my father’s father was dead and that my uncle Oscar was dead and that my uncle David was dead and that each of these instances was unnatural. And I saw it in my own father, who loves you, who counsels you, who slipped me money to care for you. My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. Everyone had lost a child, somehow, to the streets, to jail, to drugs, to guns. It was said that these lost girls were sweet as honey and would not hurt a fly. It was said that these lost boys had just received a GED and had begun to turn their lives around. And now they were gone, and their legacy was a great fear.
Have they told you this story? When your grandmother was sixteen years old a young man knocked on her door. The young man was your Nana Jo’s boyfriend. No one else was home. Ma allowed this young man to sit and wait until your Nana Jo returned. But your great-grandmother got there first. She asked the young man to leave. Then she beat your grandmother terrifically, one last time, so that she might remember how easily she could lose her body. Ma never forgot. I remember her clutching my small hand tightly as we crossed the street. She would tell me that if I ever let go and were killed by an onrushing car, she would beat me back to life. When I was six, Ma and Dad took me to a local park. I slipped from their gaze and found a playground. Your grandparents spent anxious minutes looking for me. When they found me, Dad did what every parent I knew would have done—he reached for his belt. I remember watching him in a kind of daze, awed at the distance between punishment and offense. Later, I would hear it in Dad’s voice—“Either I can beat him, or the police.” Maybe that saved me. Maybe it didn’t. All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire, and I cannot say whether that violence, even administered in fear and love, sounded the alarm or choked us at the exit. What I know is that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would then release them to streets where their boys employed, and were subject to, the same justice. And I knew mothers who belted their girls, but the belt could not save these girls from drug dealers twice their age. We, the children, employed our darkest humor to cope. We stood in the alley where we shot basketballs through hollowed crates and cracked jokes on the boy whose mother wore him out with a beating in front of his entire fifth-grade class. We sat on the number five bus, headed downtown, laughing at some girl whose mother was known to reach for anything—cable wires, extension cords, pots, pans. We were laughing, but I know that we were afraid of those who loved us most. Our parents resorted to the lash the way flagellants in the plague years resorted to the scourge.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me)
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Little Nicky heads to the Badlands to see the show for himself. The Western Roads are outside his remit as a U.S. Treasury agent, but he knows the men he wants are its denizens. Standing on the corner of the Great Western and Edinburgh Roads, a sideshow, a carnival of the doped, the beaten, and the crazed. He walks round to the Avenue Haig strip and encounters the playground of Shanghai’s crackpots, cranks, gondoos, and lunatics. He’s accosted constantly: casino touts, hustling pimps, dope dealers; monkeys on chains, dancing dogs, kids turning tumbles, Chinese ‘look see’ boys offering to watch your car. Their numbers rise as the Japs turn the screws on Shanghai ever tighter. Half-crazy American missionaries try to sell him Bibles printed on rice paper—saving souls in the Badlands is one tough beat. The Chinese hawkers do no better with their porno cards of naked dyed blondes, Disney characters in lewd poses, and bare-arsed Chinese girls, all underage. Barkers for the strip shows and porno flicks up the alleyways guarantee genuine French celluloid of the filthiest kind. Beggars abound, near the dealers and bootleggers in the shadows, selling fake heroin pills and bootleg samogon Russian vodka, distilled in alleyways, that just might leave you blind. Off the Avenue Haig, Nicky, making sure of his gun in its shoulder holster, ventures up the side streets and narrow laneways that buzz with the purveyors of cure-all tonics, hawkers of appetite suppressants, male pick-me-ups promising endless virility. Everything is for sale—back-street abortions and unwanted baby girls alongside corn and callus removers, street barbers, and earwax pickers. The stalls of the letter writers for the illiterate are next to the sellers of pills to cure opium addiction. He sees desperate refugees offered spurious Nansen passports, dubious visas for neutral Macao, well-forged letters of transit for Brazil. He could have his fortune told twenty times over (gypsy tarot cards or Chinese bone chuckers? Your choice). He could eat his fill—grilled meat and rice stalls—or he could start a whole new life: end-of-the-worlders and Korean propagandists offer cheap land in Mongolia and Manchukuo.
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Paul French (City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai)
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Carrara car mart also offers good insurance options having cultivated rich association with various professional contacts in the finance and insurance industry.
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carraracarmart
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I don't write gloom for the sake of it, I do it because it's real. When you're down, cut open and vulnerable, it's not going to be Michelle Pfeifer who drops down onto the hood of your car with diamonds stashed in her vagina, it's going to be a sociopath. When you're stuck in monotony and feeling trapped, there will be no dashing prince to save you, there will be a serial killer, or a drug dealer; a psycho. Lame impalas are picked off first. There's a greater social lesson in that than "love will set you free".
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Max Davine
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Digital technology offers new, imaginative ways to connect personally and powerfully with potential customers in traditional ways like direct marketing. A great example of this comes from a Toronto Porsche dealer who went around some of the Canadian city’s most affluent neighborhoods with a shiny white 911 sports car, a digital camera, and a mobile printer. Taking photographs of the brand new vehicle parked in the driveways of these upscale homes, the dealer printed out custom ads and dropped them into the mail slots. The campaign featured the provocative headline: “It’s closer than you think.” The result was an astonishing 32 percent response rate, which means about a third of these prospects called to schedule a test drive, a staggering improvement over the very low single digit response rates typically deemed successful in traditional direct mail efforts.
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Douglas Van Praet (Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing)
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Our Organization Carrara Car Mart is one of the famous and successful used car yards on the Gold Coast. Our motive to enables us in choosing the best used cars for our valuable customers.
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carraracarmart
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LINC “was the first machine that you could take apart and put in the back of your car, carry somewhere else, put back together again, and it would run,” Ornstein recalled. “That idea had never previously seemed conceivable.
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Michael A. Hiltzik (Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age)
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All salesmen are actors: their priority is persuasion, not sincerity. That’s why the word “salesman” can be a slur and the used car dealer is our archetype of shadiness. But we only react negatively to awkward, obvious salesmen—that is, the bad ones.
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Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
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Whatever was under his jacket broke and liquid went everywhere. He was cussing and carrying on, but I didn’t take the time to think about all that just then. As the fight ran out of him, I cuffed him and looked around.
The cops, seated in their patrol car nearby, were just about doubled over laughing. I went over to see what was up.
“That’s so and so, they told me. One of the biggest drug dealers in the city. We wish we could have beat him like you just did.”
Apparently, Mr. Popo ignored all the signs and wandered into the training exercise figuring he’d carry on business as usual. There are idiots everywhere—but I guess that explains how he got into that line of work in the first place.
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Chris Kyle (American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History)
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Looking to buy a used car? Carrara Car Mart Sales specialises in the sale of quality used vehicles in Queensland.
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carraracarmart
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Great service and range of cars to choose from our Gold Coast car yard with amazing finance and car insurance options available.
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carraracarmart
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The car dealers in the Carra Car Mart provide you a variety of used cars which include top brand cars like Volkswagen, Ford, Toyota, Honda on the Gold Coast.
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carraracarmart
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Our Organization Carrara Car Mart is one of the famous and successful used car yards on the Gold Coast.
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carraracarmart
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Carrara car mart offers popular and established brands among cars like Volkswagen, Ford, Hyundai, Holden, Toyota, Nissan, Mistubishi, Mazda, Isuza and Honda. Buyers can also opt for Family Sedan or Wagon, 7 and 8 seaters, 4WD’s, people movers, sports utility vehicles, hatchbacks, convertibles or coupe’s.
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Carrara car mart
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Carra Car Mart has the best deals on used cars on the Gold Coast, the surroundings of Queensland as well as servicing the client’s in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
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carraracarmart
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Carrara Car Mart is a local family owned and functioned car dealers of the Gold Coast with an immense experience of selling used cars on the Gold Coast and Queensland.
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carraracarmart
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Carrara Car Mart are a leading Gold Coast used car dealership. Great selection, Unbeatable Prices. Finance available! Contact us today to find out more! Carrara Car Mart are a proud local reputable car dealer in Queensland who know how to provide you with the best value for your money.
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carraracarmart
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The friendly and knowledgeable staff to provide you the satisfying service.
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carraracarmart
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Hear from our past and present customers of Carrara Car Mart, leading car dealers gold coast. Also on Car Sales QLD.
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carraracarmart
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Carrara Car Mart we provide high quality, affordable, efficient vehicles to our valuable customers.
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carraracarmart
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Over the years, we worked on some promising projects that Hunter could do while never leaving the Farm. One was The Gonzo Book of Etiquette, a radical updating of Emily Post that would instruct modern people on such niceties as how to tell your parents that your significant other is a drug dealer; how to cope with partiers or guests who won't leave when the festivities are over; how to respond, legally and shrewdly, to various forms of police interrogation (the „What Marijuana?“ as we called it); what to wear to a wedding between a rock star and a stripper; how to explain what a Deering grinder full of coke is to your mother-in-law; how to get the car keys away from a drunk without being stranded; using guns safely around drug abusers, and so on. I don't know why he was never able to sell that concept.
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Jay Cowan
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While preparing used cars for sale in Queensland can maximize the value of vehicles, not most of people do it and suffer with financial loss. Well, it’s not rocket science to learn preparing used cars for sale in Queensland.
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Carrara CarMart
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All vehicles to be delivered to the buyers are mechanically tested, so people can be carefree while buying them as their safety and road worthiness has been already established. Vehicles are serviced properly before being delivered at their respective locations in the Queensland area.
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carraracarmart
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Most of us would love to buy a new car, but buying a used car in good condition can be a better deal as this offer buying an upper grade car at a lower cost.
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carraracarmart
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Crawford. “Well, earlier today a man walked into a dealership in town and said his name was Carl Crawford and asked to test-drive a Navigator and never came back,” said the officer. Crawford was confused. He told the cops he’d never driven a Navigator in his life. As it turned out, a crafty car burglar wearing Crawford’s jersey had taken a gamble on a Tampa Lincoln dealer having no clue what the best player on the city’s baseball team looked like. It worked.
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Molly Knight (The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse)
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Carrara car mart offers widespread services across Australia. It provides services to the car buyers not only in the Gold Coast, but also in the rest of Queensland.
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carraracarmart
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There are a variety of car dealers in Gold Coasts dealing in used cars at the best price.
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carraracarmart
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Multiple finance options to suit your needs. Some of which are exclusive to Carrara Carmart due to our impeccable conduct and experience of not only the motor trade but that of the finance industry.
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carraracarmart
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What some churches have created is a remarkably sophisticated, very efficient system dedicated to creating the surface appearance of people-centricity, while in reality remaining as unresponsive, impenetrable, and clueless regarding the real needs of its people as even the most backward car dealer. The emerging culture is looking for something far less slick and produced. People are not looking for someone to speak to them glibly about relationships. They are looking for a friend. They are not looking for someone to talk with them about getting real. They are looking for those who will be open and honest about their lives.
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Dave Browning (Deliberate Simplicity: How the Church Does More by Doing Less (Leadership Network Innovation Series))
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Carrara Car Mart are a proud local reputable car dealer in Queensland who know how to provide you with the best value for your money
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carraracarmart
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We only handpick the best vehicles which make us the best car dealers on the Gold Coast.
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carraracarmart
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Carrara Car Mart are a proud local reputable car dealer in Queensland who know how to provide you with the best value for your money.
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carraracarmart
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Are you looking for Buying or selling a car? Examine the range and quality of cars for sale below in Carrara Car Mart Queensland from car dealers and private sellers,
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carraracarmart
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The car dealers in the Carra Car Mart provide you a variety of used cars which include top brand cars like Volkswagen, Ford, Toyota, Honda on the Gold Coast. We offer the most affordable Gold Coast used car deals and easy payment plan on all our vehicles.
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carraracarmart
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Would you buy a used car from your occupier? For the first six months of the intifada, Ehud Gol was the official Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman. Every day he had to go before the world’s press and defend Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. But in the spring of 1988, Gol was made the Israeli Consul General in Rio de Janeiro and he had to sell his car before he left the country. Practically the first place he went was to a Palestinian car dealer in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “Intifada or no intifada, this was business,” Gol explained to me. “The car dealer even came down to the Foreign Ministry and we went over all the papers in my office. There I was, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, and this guy, whose son was probably out throwing stones, was ready to buy from me—and it was a used car!” A Palestinian teacher I knew was driving from Ramallah to Jerusalem one afternoon when he saw a colleague of his from Bir Zeit University and offered to give him a lift. “This fellow came from a small village near Ramallah,” said my teacher friend. “The whole way into Jersualem he was talking to me about the intifada and how it had changed his village, how everyone was involved, and how the local committees of the uprising were running the village and they were getting rid of all the collaborators. He was really enthusiastic, and I was really impressed. As we got close to Jerusalem, I asked him where he wanted to be dropped off and he said, ‘The Hebrew University.’ I was really surprised, so I said, ‘What are you going there for?’ and he said, ‘I teach an Arabic class there.’ It simply didn’t occur to him that there was any contradiction between enthusiasm for the intifada and where he was going.
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Thomas L. Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem)
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An example is the campaign that Goodby, Berlin & Sil- verstein produced for the Northern California Honda Deal- ers Advertising Association (NCHDAA) in 1989. Rather than conform to the stereotypical dealer group advertising ("one of a kind, never to be repeated deals, this weekend 114 Figure 4.1 UNUM: "Bear and Salmon. Figure 4.2 UNUM: "Father and Child." 115 PEELING THE ONION only, the Honda-thon, fifteen hundred dollars cash back . . ." shouted over cheesy running footage), it was decided that the campaign should reflect the tone of the national cam- paign that it ran alongside. After all, we reasoned, the only people who know that one spot is from the national cam- paign and another from a regional dealer group are industry insiders. In the real world, all people see is the name "Honda" at the end. It's dumb having one of (Los Angeles agency) Rubin Postaer's intelligent, stylish commercials for Honda in one break, and then in the next, 30 seconds of car salesman hell, also apparently from Honda. All the good work done by the first ad would be undone by the second. What if, we asked ourselves, we could in some way regionalize the national message? In other words, take the tone and quality of Rubin Postaer's campaign and make it unique to Northern California? All of the regional dealer groups signed off as the Northern California Chevy/Ford/ Toyota Dealers, yet none of the ads would have seemed out of place in Florida or Wisconsin. In fact, that's probably where they got them from. In our research, we began not by asking people about cars, or car dealers, but about living in Northern California. What's it like? What does it mean? How would you describe it to an alien? (There are times when my British accent comes in very useful.) How does it compare to Southern California? "Oh, North and South are very different," a man in a focus group told me. "How so?" "Well, let me put it this way. There's a great rivalry between the (San Francisco) Giants and the (L.A.) Dodgers," he said. "But the Dodgers' fans don't know about it." Everyone laughed. People in the "Southland" were on a different planet. All they cared about was their suntans and flashy cars. Northern Californians, by comparison, were more modest, discerning, less likely to buy things to "make state- ments," interested in how products performed as opposed to 116 Take the Wider View what they looked like, more environmentally conscious, and concerned with the quality of life. We already knew from American Honda—supplied re- search what Northern Californians thought of Honda's cars. They were perceived as stylish without being ostentatious, reliable, understated, good value for the money . . . the paral- lels were remarkable. The creative brief asked the team to consider placing Honda in the unique context of Northern California, and to imagine that "Hondas are designed with Northern Californi- ans in mind." Dave O'Hare, who always swore that he hated advertising taglines and had no talent for writing them, came back immediately with a line to which he wanted to write a campaign: "Is Honda the Perfect Car for Northern Califor- nia, or What?" The launch commercial took advantage of the rivalry between Northern and Southern California. Set in the state senate chamber in Sacramento, it opens on the Speaker try- ing to hush the house. "Please, please," he admonishes, "the gentleman from Northern California has the floor." "What my Southern Californian colleague proposes is a moral outrage," the senator splutters, waving a sheaf of papers at the other side of the floor. "Widening the Pacific Coast Highway . . . to ten lanes!" A Southern Californian senator with bouffant hair and a pink tie shrugs his shoulders. "It's too windy," he whines (note: windy as in curves, not weather), and his fellow Southern Californians high-five and murmur their assent. The Northern Californians go nuts, and the Speaker strug- gles in vain to call everyone to order. The camera goes out- side as th
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Anonymous
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Do you have any fun plans today?”
“I’m going to buy a car.” I couldn’t keep the glee out of my voice, and it made him smile. “I’ve never bought a car before. I’m really looking forward to it.”
“That does sound . . . well, I don’t know if fun’s the word I would use. Having the car is fun. Buying it usually not so much.”
“I’ve been adequately warned. And my friend Shay is supposed to be here in a few minutes. I’m hoping to get to the lot before it opens so I can get the car I want.” This was the dealer’s busiest day of the week and I was afraid the car would get sold. My phone buzzed with a text from Shay. “Speak of the devil.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“Everything okay?”
“Not really. Shay had to cancel. I’m going to try one of my other friends.” I called Delia and she didn’t pick up. Which was unlike her. I tried texting her and waited.
“No answer?” Tyler asked.
“She didn’t reply,” I confirmed, a sinking feeling settling in my stomach. “Which means I’m going to have to take an Uber to get to this dealership.” It wouldn’t be cheap.
“I can drive you.”
“What?” Had I heard him correctly?
“I can drive you,” he said, repeating his offer. “I don’t have much going on until later on this evening, so if you want, I can go with you.”
He’s not interested in you. He has a girlfriend who looks like a Russian Barbie come to life. He is just being your friend. Stop being so excited.
My pounding heart didn’t listen.
Something in my expression made him laugh. “Is that a yes?”
Um, obviously the answer was yes. Because I might have been a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. It was, in fact, an overly enthusiastic “Yes!” It made him laugh again. So even if I was embarrassing myself, it was worth it to hear his reaction.
“From what I’ve read online, you’ll be even better backup than Shay,” I told him. “Because you’re a man. And you’re tall.” And hot.
Thankfully, my lips refrained from uttering that last part.
“You don’t know any other tall men?” he asked.
“We did discuss this as a friend group, and no, we didn’t have anybody else to ask that we thought might do it. Delia did offer to send along her giant cardboard cutout of Edward from Twilight, but I passed.”
“Good choice,” he said with a grin. “Are you ready to go?”
“Let me grab my purse.
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Sariah Wilson (Roommaid)
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The direct sales model embraced by Tesla stands as a major affront to car dealers used to haggling with their customers and making their profits from exorbitant maintenance
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Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future)
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According to the latest report of PAMA (Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association), we witnessed a greatest achievement of Suzuki Alto in Dec 2021.
Interesting fact is Suzuki suspended booking of Suzuki Alto VXL for a while, because the AGS/VXL variant cut out of production because of the shortage of semiconductor chip.
How They Achieve This Landmark?
There are few simple reasons behind it, they didn’t compromise on the quality of their procurement.
There are few factors which enhances car performance, including installation of Quality tires, because Pakistan’s road qualities are below the average, so the maintenance of the car tires are so important.
Various tires brands claims that they are best in the business, but according to the performance, no brand ever achieve the landmark what Maxxis achieved.
If you are car owner and want to change or update your car tires and didn’t knew how to identify your car suitable tires, you can purchase it from Maxxis.pk, or visit our nearest affiliated outlet.
Maxxis.pk is only Tire Dealer of Maxxis brand in Pakistan, and can only found at Maxxis affiliated outlets. Faisalabad, Lahore, Islamabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Sheikhupura are some of the leading cities, however you can find these Quality tires all over Pakistan.
If not Maxxis then you can visit Tyre Dealers official website and grab your tires.
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Manzoor Ehtesham (A Dying Banyan)
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Why Would You Procure, Store & Sell Used Cars As A Branded Physical Dealer, If You Are Buying At A High Cost & Selling At Low.
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Sandeep Aggarwal
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James settled down to the film. He got a shock when he noticed Nicole and Junior had their arms around each other and an even bigger one a minute later when they started snogging. They were all over each other. Nicole’s leg was up in the air and James kept getting kicked. He got up and moved down two seats so he was sitting on the opposite side of April, away from any flailing limbs. “They’re getting on well,” April grinned. She grinned for a long time. James watched half a minute of the film and she was still grinning at him. He realized the girls had planned an ambush. Nicole already knew Junior fancied her because he’d asked her out before. James felt like he’d been hooked on a line and reeled in, but he checked April out and realized that as traps go, it wasn’t a bad one. April was decent-looking, with long brown hair and fit legs. James slid his hand under the armrest and put it on top of April’s. She twisted in her seat, so she could rest her head on James’s shoulder. James turned around, breathed April’s smell and kissed her on the cheek while she grabbed a few of his Maltesers. They stayed that way for a couple of minutes, until April moved away and blew chocolate breath over him. “So,” she whispered. “Are you gonna snog me or what?” James figured, “What the hell, it’s my birthday.” They snogged for ten minutes, breaking up when the movie got near the end and turned into a big car chase and punch-up that was actually worth watching.
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Robert Muchamore (The Dealer (Cherub Book 2))
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This spread between replacement value and liquidation value may be high for real property—often as much as 10 to 20 percent. For instance, I buy a $100,000 painting and pay $7,000 more in sales taxes, for a total of $107,000. The next day I change my mind and sell it for the same price of $100,000, paying $10,000 in commissions, for net proceeds of $90,000. The spread was $90,000 to $107,000, a difference of $17,000 or 17 percent of the “base” price of $100,000. This is what is lost in a round of buying and selling. It’s that way with houses, cars, art, and jewelry. In contrast, the cost to trade listed securities is typically only a small fraction of a percent—which, along with their liquidity, makes them more appealing stores of wealth.
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Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
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The true account of what happened next has never been made public before. The official story the police released was that the Cal-ID, a new twenty-five-million-dollar Japanese computer the California Department of Justice had just bought, broke the case. Actually, the fingerprint Orange County found on the mirror in the orange Toyota was flown up to Sacramento, and with the computer’s help, all the Ramirezes on file were searched. They found the name of a Richard Munoz Ramirez—a tall, gangly El Paso drifter, thief, and sometime drug dealer with a record for small crimes, petty thefts, and stealing a car—which apparently was the December 1984 arrest Perez had told them about and the LAPD had never been able to find.
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Philip Carlo (The Night Stalker: The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez)
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I apply this to the trade-offs among health, wealth, and time. You can trade time and health to accumulate more wealth. Why health? You may be stressed, lose sleep, have a poor diet, or skip exercise. If you are like me and want better health, you can invest time and money on medical care, diagnostic and preventive measures, and exercise and fitness. For decades I have spent six to eight hours a week running, hiking, walking, playing tennis, and working out in a gym. I think of each hour spent on fitness as one day less that I’ll spend in a hospital. Or you can trade money for time by working less and buying goods and services that save time. Hire household help, a personal assistant, and pay other people to do things you don’t want to do. Thousand-dollar-an-hour New York professionals who pay $50 an hour for a car and driver so they can work while they commute understand clearly the monetary value of their time.
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Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
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An option is the right to buy or sell something in the future. The right to buy is a “call option” the right to sell is a “put option.” So if you knew several new Corvettes would be arriving at a car dealership in a month, you might pay the dealer $1,000 now to reserve a Corvette for you to buy at a certain price, say $40,000. When the cars arrived, you would have a call option—the right but not the obligation—to buy one for $40,000. Because you owned a call option, you would want the price of new Corvettes to increase: if the price increased to $50,000 your option to buy a Corvette for $40,000 would be worth about $10,000. Also, with a call option, your downside is limited. If the price were to drop to $30,000, you could simply let the dealer keep your $1,000 (called the option premium) and buy the Corvette for the lower price.
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Frank Partnoy (FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street)
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His car....had the black-tinted windows I usually associated with south Florida or drug dealers. Or is that redundant?
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Nancy Pickard (Bum Steer (Jenny Cain, #6))
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Facing four hundred million man-years of calculations, with a resulting railroad car full of strategy tables, enough to fill a Rolodex five miles long, I tried to simplify the problem. I
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Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
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It is common for one party to a transaction to have better information than another party. In the parlance of economists, such a case is known as an information asymmetry. We accept as a verity of capitalism that someone (usually an expert) knows more than someone else (usually a consumer). But information asymmetries everywhere have in fact been gravely wounded by the Internet.
Information is the currency of the Internet. As a medium, the Internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. Often, as in the case of term life insurance prices, the information existed but in a woefully scattered way. (In such instances, the Internet acts like a gigantic horseshoe magnet waved over an endless sea of haystacks, plucking the needle out of each one.) The Internet has accomplished what even the most fervent consumer advocates usually cannot: it has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public.
The Internet has proven particularly fruitful for situations in which a face-to-face encounter with an expert might actually exacerbate the problem of asymmetrical information—situations in which an expert uses his informational advantage to make us feel stupid or rushed or cheap or ignoble. Consider a scenario in which your loved one has just died and now the funeral director (who knows that you know next to nothing about his business and are under emotional duress to boot) steers you to the $8,000 mahogany casket. Or consider the automobile dealership: a salesman does his best to obscure the car’s base price under a mountain of add-ons and incentives. Later, however, in the cool-headed calm of your home, you can use the Internet to find out exactly how much the dealer paid the manufacturer for that car. Or you might just log on to TributeDirect.com and buy that mahogany casket yourself for only $3,595, delivered overnight.
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Steven D. Levitt
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fast-food places, discount stores, car dealers, and what passes for nightclubs hereabouts.
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Nelson DeMille (The General's Daughter)
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I was just in the process of looking for the snow tires option,” he said. “I’m sure that’ll fix me right up.” “The snow tires option?” I asked, completely incredulous. “Yeah, the guy at the dealer said snow tires were an option with this car when I bought it. But I forgot to ask him where the button was.” I
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Lucy Lennox (Body and Soul (Twist of Fate #3))
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What do women who live in houses, wear traditional long skirts, speak Romani to their family members and are offended when somebody calls them 'Gypsies' have in common with women who live in caravans, wear shorts, use only the occasional Romani word and refer to themselves as 'Gypsies?' What does a Romani coppersmith in Bulgaria share with a Romani used-car dealer in Los Angeles? How can a Spanish musician of Gitano background feel represented by a Hungarian Romani member of the European Parliament?
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Yaron Matras (I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies)
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the typical economic support system for an American military town. That means pawn shops, secondhand car dealers, pawn shops, secondhand furniture dealers, secondhand clothing stores, pawn shops, gun stores, all-you-can-eat cafeterias, and, oh God, how could I forget, mobile homes and prefab home sales. Then you
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Finn Murphy (The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road)
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AM Tuning Ltd
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In fact, on Duveen’s last visit to H. E.’s California mansion, San Marino, just before H. E. died, the host didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay for the freight-car load of merchandise in the guest’s caravan. Duveen accepted instead some Los Angeles real estate, a commodity of which H. E. was then the largest owner.
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S.N. Behrman (Duveen: The story of the most spectacular art dealer of all time)
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The millionaires of the Duveen Era were all dressed up, but they really had nowhere to go. Duveen supplied a favoured few of them with a destination. The private lives of these sad tycoons were often bitter; their children and their family life disappointed them. The fathers had too much to give; the returns were often in inverse ratio to the size of the gifts. They knew that they were ruining their children and yet they didn’t know how to stop it. Their children made disastrous marriages, got killed in racing cars, had to pay blackmail to avoid scandal. But with the works of art it was different. They asked for nothing. They were rewarding. They shed their radiance, and it was a lovely, soothing light. You could take them or leave them, and when you had visitors you could bask in the admiration the pictures and sculptures excited, which was directed towards you even more subtly than towards them, as if you yourself had gathered them and, even, created them. The works of art became their children.
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S.N. Behrman (Duveen: The story of the most spectacular art dealer of all time)
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Hell, if Roxy muttered “I wanna drive a Porsche,” I’d get her one. There didn’t seem to be any luxury car dealers in the Magic City of Sharia, though, so I might have to settle for drawing their logo on Dillo’s forehead.
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理不尽な孫の手 (Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation Vol. 13)
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These were the men who made deals with desperate industrialists to provide transportation for the goods stalled in their warehouses—or, failing to obtain the percentage demanded, made deals to purchase the goods, when the factory closed, at the bankruptcy sale, at ten cents on the dollar, and to speed the goods away in freight cars suddenly available, away to markets where dealers of the same kind were ready for the kill. There were the men who hovered over factories, waiting for the last breath of a furnace, to pounce upon the equipment—and over desolate sidings, to pounce upon the freight cars of undelivered goods—these were a new biological species, the hit-and-run businessmen, who did not stay in any line of business longer than the span of one deal, who had no payrolls to meet, no overhead to carry, no real estate to own, no equipment to build, whose only asset and sole investment consisted of an item known as “friendship.” These were the men whom official speeches described as “the progressive businessmen of our dynamic age,” but whom people called “the pull peddlers”—the species included many breeds, those of “transportation pull,” and of “steel pull” and “oil pull” and “wage-raise pull” and “suspended sentence pull”—men who were dynamic, who kept darting all over the country while no one else could move, men who were active and mindless, active, not like animals, but like that which breeds, feeds and moves upon the stillness of a corpse.
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
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He talks to me about cars, to Barnstorm about sports, and to Mateo about Game of Thrones. He talks to Elaine—I guess car dealers don’t worry about being head-butted down stairs or tossed into garbage dumpsters. He talks to Kiana about practically everything. He asks Rahim’s opinion on the art for new ads for Terranova Motors, and Rahim never so much as yawns when he’s around.
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Gordon Korman (The Unteachables)
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Ikonik Motors Limited
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With over 30 years of experience, Aeon Auto is a leading authorized Ford dealer in the Philippines that offers a full line-up of sought-after Ford cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. We are the go-to destination for all Ford automotive needs, from exceptional Ford car maintenance to a diverse array of Ford accessories and models. To learn more about our Ford car price list, visit our website.
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Aeon Auto PH
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Aomame pondered the idea of God. God has no form, yet is able to take on any form. The image she had was of a streamlined Mercedes coupe, a brand-new car just delivered from the dealer.
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Haruki Murakami (1Q84: Book 3)