rude

["Mahoney, John" <jmahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>
Rude People???
Date: Wednesday, January 5, 2005 09:47 AM
From: j gray <jgray 55@xxxxxxxxx>
Question /Possible RANT here.......First of all i live
in Central Illinois..which i tell the prospective
buyers first thing! SOOooooo.....WHY is it that when
you have AMC parts / cars for sale... folks from the
AMC list/ AMC Forum will email/call you and ask tons
of questions all about what you have for sale,say they
like the price and will take it / say they are coming
to look it over or to pick it up...then NEVER show up
/never call to say why or  never even return messages
<<

I, too, have often wondered why so very many AMC people seem to be so rude,
crude or unpleasant.  Such a sad state was brought to my attention in a
wholly unexpected way again over the recent holidays.  During my
conversation with a 70-ish couple I only see about twice each year (he, a
self-made millionaire, proud that his father was a janitor and that his
education was co-op [study/work] college and the US Army; his wife, a
survivor of bombing by the USA/AF he served [her family's home in a lovely
riverside town

http://www.ludwigshafen.de/images/standort/hochwasserschutz/hochwasserschutz
_am_rhein.jpg

with a rather strategic tenant 

http://www.das-fotoarchiv.com/portfolio/meyer/basf.jpg

http://www.basf.de/basf/img/ludwigsh/luhafen.jpg

was destroyed --- and her only brother was killed elsewhere in WWII service,
one of the kindest persons one would ever hope to encounter...]; anyway, in
talking about cars [his favorite, not unsurprisingly, old German survivors
--- yes, we'll continue to use that word without any gilt [get it?] about
Bloomington --- including one just recently sold], 

http://autosportdesigns.com/Sales/photopage.asp?ID=834

he happened to ask which cars I was still keeping in storage [like many
millionaires, both he and his wife are very frugal; exactly the type of
people that famous book famously uncovered]

http://www.albany.edu/~danko/millionaire/book.jpg  

(which, in case anyone's still reading, I'll update with the fact that
Warren Buffett drove his Lincoln Town Car [no Bugatti at Berkshire] for more
than ten years...), since he thinks that non-running cars waste good money.
When my short list [I'm not funny enough to host a TV talk show] got to "'71
Ambassador and '79 Spirit," he shook his head and commented, "They'll never
be worth anything; why would you sell two good cars [a GM car and a Japanese
car we'd previously mentioned...] and keep them?"  For once, I was truly at
a loss for words.

The Spirit became eligible for AACA in 2004; it's been "dead" for ten years.
The Ambassador can qualify for HPOF display in 2006; it hasn't seen a road
since 1983.  Over the 8-1/2 years this list has been among my car readings,
my not-original-owner/less-than-ideal '67, '68 and '69 AMC cars have been
sold out of storage.  I've only held onto nostalgia.

I've met a handful of locals into AMC; ranging from friendly-yet-busy to
semi-jerks.  I've "met" dozens/hundreds/thousands of AMC people online;
ranging from knowledgeable and motivated to seemingly idiotic.  I've met
"the" AMC authors and I've corresponded with "the" AMC deans; I've been
surprised by the lack of interest and defensiveness seen.  I've defended the
concept of AMC as a truly collectible brand to hundreds of "other
make/vintage/price" fans; I've not changed many minds about the future.