Ah Still Love Fort Worth
It’s a whole other town, thank goodness
By Special to the Star-Telegram
Well, a month from now it will have been 40 years since my family moved to Fort Worth. It really was like moving to a "whole other country."
Up to that point we’d lived in Burbank, Merced, Fairbanks, Dover, Pass Christian, the Philippines and Altus (yes, Oklahoma), and most summers we’d spent in Burbank. I’d spend my days watching shows being filmed at NBC or hanging out with friends; one friend’s father worked at Warner Brothers and was the cinematographer on the movie, Giant, while another appeared as one of Debbie Reynolds’ grandchildren in How the West Was Won. OK, so Fort Worth didn’t have that kind of flash, but it was all make-believe in LA anyhow.
No, being in Fort Worth wasn’t the same as being in California. Yet what might surprise you is that our neighbors in Burbank were just as cautiously conservative as the folks in Fort Worth; there just weren’t as many outwardly friendly Californians as Texans.
If there was one truly great decision the parents made, it was to move to Fort Worth and call it home. I’ve discovered that, in uncertain economic times, this seems to be one region that doesn’t panic, where life and business seem to move on at a steady and reassuring pace. Maybe it’s the people.
Financial Lightning-Proof?
In spite of some of the high-profile economic issues I’ve written about in this Fort Worth Sunday paper column, or political issues such as privatizing our highways, the fact is that most don’t apply to our city. The bad economic hits seem to strike elsewhere. For example, when the Ford Motor Company released its sales report for April, showing another serious downturn in business nationally that was even worse for their truck sales, I was stunned to find that the Ford dealers in Tarrant County sold around 80 vehicles more than they had in April of 2007. Truck sales were down by fewer than 200 units, but sales of Ford Super Duty trucks here were up from last year.
Classic Chevrolet is still No.1 nationally, while Mortiz Kia was America’s No.3 new Kia seller for April, falling slightly from the No.1 position those folks earned nationally in March. Sam Pack’s Five Star Ford took the No.3 spot nationwide – and, if they had delivered just eight more vehicles, could have claimed second place with Ford for April; 22 more Ford sales and Sam Pack would have come in at No.1. The point is that if you read the national news, then car sales do look scary for the domestic manufacturers – but that’s just not the case for so many dealers in Tarrant County.
Stronger than Rent
There is a huge and fundamental difference between car buyers in Houston or Dallas and those in Fort Worth. I personally learned that lesson the hard way in 1979.
Almost 35 years ago – a month or so before the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 hit – I started selling cars in Houston. For the first three weeks after that event, you could have gone quail hunting on the showroom floor at Sam White Oldsmobile and never worried about hitting a customer with shotgun pellets. Well, the media told us night after night about the high price of gasoline, showing film of people waiting in line to fill up their cars with that high-priced gas. Yet suddenly Houstonians were back in the showroom, buying automobiles like gas was still 29 cents a gallon. In 1974, with the nation mired in the worst recession since World War II, Sam White sold 5,200 Oldsmobiles — and Bill McDavid Oldsmobile in Southeast Houston outsold us.
By 1975, though, the Houston market was cooling fast, and I read in Time magazine that only two cities in all of America were already recovering economically: Dallas and Wichita, Kansas. It was that Time article that brought me back to the Metroplex, and that’s when I realized that no one in Houston really knew how to sell cars.
The distance between Oldsmobile stores in Houston was 22 miles or more; if you gave someone a reasonably fair price, they weren’t going to drive all over town trying to beat your deal by $25 – even back then Houston traffic wasn’t worth it. But Dallas was infinitely more competitive. Dealerships were often only eight or 10 miles apart, and back then the freeway system was wide open any time of day. People might purchase a car, sign the contract, leave a deposit and finance it with their credit union, and then call back two days later to say they’d bought elsewhere. Of course, only a small minority of Dallas buyers did that, but it had been almost an unknown situation in Houston’s car market.
Ultimately, in Houston one learned how to demonstrate cars properly, because that was always the key job description (and should be everywhere). In Dallas, on the other hand, if you were selling cars you had to really learn every aspect of the business, because otherwise you’d miss 90 percent of possible sales.
Then in 1979 I came home to Fort Worth.
If They Said It They Meant It
In my first month here I was selling cars like I was still in Dallas. Only … in Fort Worth, if someone shook your hand and said, "We’ve got a deal," it was a done deal – period, unlike in Dallas. If someone in Fort Worth made an offer on a car it was legitimate; you didn’t request a deposit check to guarantee that he’d keep his word. Not realizing that, I accidentally insulted a lot of people my first month here – I’d never had so many people jump up and leave a dealership so mad, so fast. The second month, I became more trusting.
I was to discover that this market was exceptional, and not just for that reason. If you did your job well your customers would buy from you over and over again; I could count on two hands the repeat owners I’d had in my four years working in Dallas. I’ve often been asked why there’s a difference between the car buyers in Fort Worth and other large markets, whether it be Houston or Dallas. I always thought it might be that so many people in Fort Worth knew each other, and they knew if it got out their word wasn’t any good, it could hurt their reputation. So huge were Houston and Dallas, no one the buyer knew might ever find out he’d welshed.
Aside from that, though, in Fort Worth people seemed to take just a tad longer to decide to buy a new car than they do in Dallas. They have pretty much made up their mind on the car before they negotiate, and if they like you as a person, there is almost always a way to make the deal work for everybody.
The Recession’s Over Yonder
By 1980, the country was in yet another major recession, this one worse than the one in 1974 – 1975. Here in Fort Worth, though, people were still buying cars; although sales did fall off slightly, most of our local dealers were still in business during a time when low sales and no profits had forced many dealers in Dallas to sell their stores. I should point out that in these current less-than-great economic times, a number of dealerships in Dallas have again changed hands. But in our neck of the woods we have the No.1 Chevy store, almost the No.1 Ford dealership and a Kia store that has come in No.1 in the nation.
And this doesn’t count the many dealerships in and around Fort Worth that are selling more cars today than they did three years ago.
If sometimes I cover issues critical to the nation and forget to remind you that many of the economic problems are alien concepts to us here, I ask your forgiveness. Knowing that I can just about count on it is just one more reason why I believe the best decision my parents ever made was to make Fort Worth our home town.
© 2008 Ed Wallace
Ed Wallace is a recipient of the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, given by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and is a member of the American Historical Society. He reviews new cars every Friday morning at 7:15 on Fox Four’s Good Day, contributes articles to BusinessWeek Online and hosts the talk show, Wheels, 8:00 to 1:00 Saturdays on 570 KLIF. E-mail: wheels570@sbcglobal.net
I’ve discovered that, in uncertain economic times, this seems to be one region that doesn’t panic, where life and business seem to move on at a steady and reassuring pace. Maybe it’s the people.
