Why is it that some car salesmen have voices that sound like they were smacked in the throat by a 2×4? The commercials are unmistakable. Even if they didn’t talk about cars in the first part of the commercial, you would know by just hearing the voice that the guy is about to start talking about how much you’re going to save this Labor Day with 0% financing.
I’m imagining the family-owned dealerships are like a monarchy where the firstborn gets the business. They prefer it be a male or, if a daughter gets it, that she find herself a husband who will then run things so she doesn’t trip over her lady parts trying to sell a sedan. The ritual of passing a dealership down from father to (ideally) son is an all day event. The family arrives at the house of the patriarch for a picnic that lasts a few hours. They do whatever it is rich people do. Children swim, adults wish they were children again but pretend they don’t, the men tell jokes about their wives while smoking cigars, the wives pretend not to care and yell at the kids for something small, cousins make out in a horse barn somewhere, and other cousins talk about how their lives suck because they didn’t want a red Corvette, they wanted a black one, and if their dad likes Prince so much he should buy his own.
The children are all sent off with their nannies, and the teenagers left earlier because they already had plans today, god! Long after the sun has set and the bonfire is high, the ritual begins. Behind a table, the head of the family makes a speech about tradition and family bond, to basically pep talk himself and the rest of the family that this isn’t batshit crazy at all. You know, like most traditions. Earlier in the day, the incumbent son made a difficult choice that would affect the rest of his life. That morning, the father told him he had to choose the instrument that would forever change his voice because he certainly couldn’t sell cars with the silky smooth tones of his current one. All choices have adverse side effects, to put it mildly. The choices are 2×4 to the throat, incision with a scalpel to the larynx, or swallowing boiling water. The choices can vary slightly depending on the family.
Years ago, one dealership family tried screaming into a pillow, but it only yielded temporary results, so the guy had to scream into his pillow almost daily. He ended up having to scream so much he blew his vocal cords out completely and was left mute. He tried to use a computer to talk like Stephen Hawking, but the public felt the commercials were off-putting because he was just standing there smiling and gesticulating while a disembodied, robotic voice spoke for him, like a sad mime at the Consumer Electronics Show. He then tried to mouth the words with the computer voice, which somehow made it simultaneously better and worse. So pillows weren’t an option for the sake of the dealership.
After the father ends his speech he looks down at the table, where the three items the son had to choose from have been set out. At this point, no one but the father knows what the son has chosen. The family watches intently; which instrument of vocal destruction will he grab? The father scans his eyes across the family for dramatic flair, looks down, and grabs the 2×4. Gasps filter in from the family. The exasperated sigh from the doctor in the family is drowned out by the louder intakes of air. A plank to the throat is a risky choice that could end up with a scalpel anyway, and often does, from the force crushing their trachea. The doctor tries to tell him this, but the son says that he trusts his father and doesn’t want a scar on his throat. The doctor doesn’t push it, because he gets free cars for life for being the family physician.
The son stands out in the open with his head up high, exposing as much neck as he possibly can. The father holds the 2×4 to the throat and does a couple of back and forth motions to make sure the placement of his throat-blow will be as accurate as possible. The family goes stone silent. The father takes a deep breath, draws back, and swings the 2×4 deliberately and confidently.
THWACK!
The son goes down in a fit of coughing and choking. The doctor runs up to him to assess his breathing. After a pregnant pause, the son stands up, silently but triumphantly, tears in his eyes, and throws his arms in the air. The family rejoices and pats him on the back. The son cannot speak because of his severe throat trauma, but soon he’ll be yelling as hard as he can in commercials to sell cars at affordable prices.
These methods are insane, yes, but as discussed a little further up, it’s all about tradition. Wagons didn’t sell themselves, my friends. At first, a regular voice was fine, but after wagons became an everyday thing, what was going to capture people’s attention? What was going to make a wagon salesman stand apart from a peddler of elixirs? Why, the voice, of course. It had to be distinct, yet strong. Normally, after talking all day, a salesman would save his voice, but what if he kept going? And thus began the journey of attaining and maintaining the voice of the dealership salesman. “This one is slightly used. Only one previous owner, and she just came back from the Oregon Trail. The wagon, that is – not the owner.”
It was about 1892 when the board planks were brought into the picture. There was a lot of trial and error of a great many things, including but not limited to: swallowing shards of glass, putting a drop of acid on the outside of the throat, family throwing rocks at the throat, prayer, hot irons, applying ice to the throat overnight, slight but constant strangulation for 24 hours, curses, and attaching leeches to the throat for 72 hours. Honestly, the leeches worked, but the practice fell out of favor because people thought it was icky and then after a few generations it was forgotten. If this generation had bothered to look back at the historical dealership texts, they would probably bring that back instead of risking a collapsed trachea and needing an emergency air hole cut into their neck.
And that’s what I imagine to be the history and long-held tradition of owning a car dealership.