Automobile salesperson
{{short description|Person who works in car sales}}
{{Refimprove|date=March 2011}}
File:1955 Mercury Montclair Convertible.jpg
File:NashCarDealership.jpg dealership]]
An automobile salesperson is a retail salesperson who sells new or used cars. Unlike traditional retail sales, car sales are sometimes negotiable.{{cite news|last=Vasquez |first=Daniel |title=Website offers no-haggle pricing |url= http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/consumerblog/2011/10/27/website-offers-no-haggling-low-price-car-purchases-at-south-florida-dealerships/ |access-date=4 October 2012 |newspaper=Sun Sentinel |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120421100702/http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/consumerblog/2011/10/27/website-offers-no-haggling-low-price-car-purchases-at-south-florida-dealerships/ |archive-date=21 April 2012 }} Salesmen are employed by new car dealerships or used car dealerships.
Car negotiation
The price of a car, unlike many retail sales, is often negotiable. New cars will often have a factory window sticker (Monroney sticker in the US) listing equipment and options, and the suggested retail price or MSRP. The salesman is traditionally paid a commission rather than a fixed salary, usually based on a combination of profit margin and unit volume.
Popular culture
The automobile salesman, particularly the used car salesman, has often been a source of characters, often negative, in movies, television shows, and cartoons. History and fairy tales often characterize peddlers (people selling goods) as negative influences, or outsiders out to take advantage of people.{{citation needed|date=May 2012}} Politicians have been negatively associated with used car salesmen in the past. A poster from the Kennedy campaign in 1960 has an image of Nixon with the caption: "Would YOU buy a used car from this man?" Such salesmen are often well aware of their occupation's negative public image. As Valerie Biden Owens explained, Joe Biden Sr. left automobile sales for real estate when his son Joe Biden Jr. was elected to the United States Senate in 1972, because "he didn't want a United States senator to have a used-car salesman for a dad."{{cite news|last=Broder |first=John M.|date=October 23, 2008|title=Father's Tough Life an Inspiration for Biden |newspaper=The New York Times |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/us/politics/24biden.html |url-status=live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20201108082045/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/us/politics/24biden.html |archive-date=November 8, 2020 |access-date=October 24, 2008}}
It is a common theme for the "used car salesman" to be cast as a shyster in popular culture.{{cite book |last1=Chesher |first1=James E. |last2=Machan |first2=Tibor R. |author2-link=Tibor Machan |title=The Business of Commerce: Examining an Honorable Profession |date=1999 |publisher=Hoover Institution Press |location=Stanford |isbn=9780817996239 |page=82 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ed6oAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA82#v=onepage&q&f=false}} The used car salesman trope is "modern culture's epitome of the sleazy, two-faced, greedy capitalist out to cheat honest people of their hard-earned money by tricking them into buying damaged or inferior goods", even though such "salespersons are engaged in a perfectly respectable endeavor that benefits millions of ordinary people".