Car business

As our tour in New Zealand has pretty much come to an end, we had one more task to complete: selling our car. The car in question is a minivan which has been converted into a backpacker's dream-vehicle, with a big mattress in the back and plenty of luggage space. It's a good and reliable car, but quite uh robust on the outside with plenty of bumps and um rusty spots, not to mention a sliding door on the side which unhinges if opened too enthusiastically...

Not so bad eh?

We assumed we would easily be able to sell it to other backpackers. The only problem was... there are hardly any backpackers arriving in New Zealand at this moment. We spent an entire morning at car fairs trying to sell our car and saw about 40 sellers, and, wait for it, 2 buyers, none of which were backpackers.

We knew what we had to do: we upped our game and took a professional approach much like any company would do.

As head analyst, Graham predicts a downturn in the second quarter.  "All indicators point to a sellers market," he says, "There is not a doubt on my mind that prospective buyers will stumble upon plenty of bargains and affordable buying opportunities."

Newly appointed CEO Dimitri highlights a fresh strategy. "We have a quality product and we are going to let everybody know about it. We will not stop until every single person in Auckland knows who we are and what we represent."

In practice this meant that we made some flyers which we distributed in hostels around town. We pleaded and begged potential buyers who weren't interested despite the dramatic price cuts we offered.

At some point it got so bad that we went around town with flyers taped to our bodies to attract attention to our product. We were starting to get nervous and anxious, until we finally found a buyer at a car fair. Our buyer was not a backpacker, in fact he was more of a bargain seeker and so his price was disappointingly low. Barely enough however to not make us want to cry. After tough and heated negotiations (all the other sellers around us were following with more than normal interest), Dimitri managed to squeeze a bit more out of them and they handed us the money for the purchase, unaware of what was about to go down.

Right after we put the money away, the buyer opened the sliding door with a bit too much gusto and - much to the delight of the other sellers around (who were still watching with interest)- the door completely unhinged and fell off the car. With the money in our pocket and a huge car-door lying on the ground next to the car, the buyer looked down in disbelief.

Sure we didn't get the best price for our car, but the look on the buyer's face was priceless...