[p912guy]

You never know what type of response you'll get walking into a car dealership showroom. I'm mid 50's and typically dressed in office or weekend casual attire and many times I'll walk into a showroom with sales folks sitting around or chatting with each other and spend 10-20 minutes browsing without even receiving a "hello". Other times I'll have two or three different sales folks approach me within a 20 minute time frame asking what I am interested in. I'd like to say x brand is better than y brand or luxury dealers are more or less friendly with their potential customers, but it really seems to me to be completely random. The last few cars I was seriously looking for, as opposed to just "shopping", I contacted the dealership ahead of time by email to see if potential models I was interested in were available, and to basically get the name of someone to ask for when I went into the dealership to look.

The only exception to that was my M235i. In that case I was actually at the dealership several months before looking for a car for my wife (X3) and a salesman approached me in a very non threatening way, we struck up a brief conversation and once he learned I was looking at the X3 he offer one up to test drive equipped similar to what I was looking for. They just made a copy of my license and gave me the keys and said take it for drive and let us know what you and your wife think. They even offered it overnight if I wanted. My wife ended up preferring the Audi Q5, but I was so impressed with the salesman and the experience, when it came time for me to get a new car, I emailed him and told him what I was interested in and he had it ready for me to test drive a few days later by appointment. Needless to say we struck a deal that worked for both of us and I have since sent him 3 more customers who ended up buying from him.

So you never know walking into a dealership.