Reputation Management: The F-150 Tonka and the Saturn Send-off

Welcome back to Reputation Management! Here we reveal the underbelly of ordinary automotive retailers—places like car dealers and service shops—with fictional service tales inspired by real customer reviews. How do we make these stories seem like they could really happen? Because of my years of experience with a Fortune 500 automotive retailer as a—you guessed it—reputation manager. —Sajeev

It started back in 1999, when a disgruntled Saturn salesperson named Chad Hasken couldn’t get his hands on SUVs for his loyal clients. We became friends in college. Any event we attended that had alcohol eventually turned into a venting session for the number of customers he lost to the Ford Explorer and Toyota RAV4. Chad’s laments fell on deaf ears with most of his classmates, but I was picking up what he put down.

He left his job at Saturn, never again to revisit the Kingdom of Sorrows forming from those underutilized “Saturn Sendoff” delivery spaces in every showroom. He received no Saturn Sendoff for his years of service, no rounds of applause from his co-workers. The dealership started collecting dust as inventory climbed and traffic shrank within its minimalist, stuccoed walls.

The Saturn Vue arrived one year later, so Chad hated it for ample reason. While he wisely moved on to greener pastures, so did the Saturn dealership that once employed him. Soon after race car driver and dealership magnate Roger Penske gave up on resuscitating the brand, Chad’s former Saturn dealership disappeared from the map.

But only for two years.

***

“Sajeev, I need your help. You need to put our newest collision center on the map.”

That was David Banner, the VP of Aftersales for CarCountry. (Aftersales includes collision centers, parts, and service departments.) He’s a legend in this business, and not just for sharing a name with a famous hip-hop artist. David Banner—everyone called him by his full name—had zero tolerance for hogwash, but those who passed muster eventually received an invite to his one and only lunch spot near the CarCountry corporate office. It’s a Cajun restaurant called Pappadeaux, and just about any weekday, the Louisiana native was spotted there eating steak and shrimp.

Upon my first lunch invite from David Banner, I learned that CarCountry’s Aftersales division was trying a moonshot of an idea. They made a collision center akin to the Taj Mahal, with state-of-the-art equipment in every corner. It was at the behest of David Banner himself, who found a nearby, defunct Saturn dealership that was too cheap to resist.

You guessed it, my friend Chad worked here over a decade ago. This reimagined building was indeed a moonshot, transitioning from GM’s endpoint in a $5 billion investment in the Saturn brand to become rarefied air in the collision center industry.

Curiosity got the best of me. I asked David Banner how CarCountry could justify turning an entire car dealership into a collision center. Turns out most of the facility was easy to convert, and the showroom that once housed Saturns became a flagship for CarCountry Collision Centers: Do it right and everyone from Wall Street to the heads of 3M and Axalta will visit our corporate office, take a quick trip to this showroom, and be blown away by CarCountry’s capabilities.

Back to David Banner’s request: Since part of my job included ensuring that all CarCountry facilities looked their best on places like Google Maps, I left our lunch meeting to visit this former Saturn dealership. It was breathtaking, and on its way to becoming a collision center festival of Saturnalia. I didn’t own a smartphone back then, so I emailed photos from my point-and-shoot camera back to David Banner while enjoying the lounge-like atmosphere of this palatial collision center.

He approved, and with a few clicks of my mouse, the discarded Saturn dealership emerged on Google’s map as a CarCountry Collision Center.

***

This became one of my favorite places to visit in the CarCountry ecosystem. My friendship with Dylan, the manager, was forged from the success of my initial visit, as one day he called me gushing over the fact that “my” Google page netted him three walk-in customers in two months. And they were good clients, with late-model luxury cars who’d pay cash for the repairs.

This was the first of many victories on Google Maps for this Reputation Manager, and I wasn’t shy to tell everyone about the value I was creating. Self-promotion equated to job security in the early days of the Social Media boom, but I knew seeing Dylan’s name on my phone this time was for another reason: There was a bad customer review we needed to address together.

“Brother, you are missing an important piece of the puzzle. They have an F-150 Tonka by Tuscany.” said Dylan.

The Sable Choco Krem cookie that snuck into my mouth at the beginning of Dylan’s call nearly choked me upon hearing the word “Tuscany.” (Tragic, as I snuck out of the office that morning to grab them from the nearby Korean grocery store. They did a great job muting the battery acid flavor of the Keurig machine coffee provided to us in the CarCountry break room.)

While Houston residents appreciate diversity in desserts and trucks, collision center managers seeking unobtainum trim for heavily depreciated brodozers have a unique outlook on the latter. This wasn’t the first time a Tuscany truck was a thorn in the side of a CarCountry Collision Center, but this nine-year-old Tonka was objectively worse.

Thanks to Ford’s partnership with King Ranch and Harley-Davidson, everyone thinks the F-150 Tonka is just another factory build. It is not, and Tuscany is under no obligation to keep a cache of spare Tonka parts to meet the needs of collision centers. Explaining the difference to a customer is a wasted effort, because the negative review you’re about to earn won’t discuss such nuances. Put another way, the bad guys are just plain bad!

I wondered aloud: “Was this a problem when collision centers were called body shops, and lifted brodozer trucks were mere conversion vans?”

“Probably so, but the Internet has no mercy,” lamented Dylan.

This F-150 Tonka was wrecked by a thief who felt it necessary to paint a concrete wall with its unique yellow hue. With multiple panel repairs on the docket, Dylan’s team sourced a Tuscany bumper, both door overlays, and even the Tonka fender vent that cracked during removal from its mangled home. But the problem came in the delay in finding two replacement wheels made by another manufacturer.

Tuscany helped, but those rims aren’t Tuscany parts per se. While their manufacturer is still in business, wheel designs change as regularly as fashion trends on Shein. I think Dylan and his staff could find 20 sets of vintage Fuchs for a Porsche 911 in the same time it took to get two more Tonka wheels.

But the unique set of circumstances for this Tonka F-150 weren’t over, as there were aftermarket LED lights that needed reinstallation after the theft. Whomever did the original wiring was no Thomas Edison, and the thieves did a great job mutilating the wiring harnesses before crashing the truck. Dylan was alerted to the issues with the lights by the claims adjuster after repairs were completed, so the fumbled communication meant a delayed implementation of a specialist technician.

This was additional time that the customer didn’t have: The termination of rental car coverage is a ticking time bomb for collision centers. Customers are generally happy driving a new vehicle for several weeks, provided it’s on their insurance company’s dime. When that ends, the reviewing on Google commences.

But our justifications for the customer experience aren’t a suitable explanation for the internet. The aforementioned nuances of aftermarket Tonka parts relative to factory-issued King Ranch bits will only infuriate the average Google Review consumer. Parts are just parts, right?

Valid reasons for actions are considered cop-outs in the world of Reputation Management. I learned this the hard way in a collision center lobby when a customer shouted, “just do your damn job and stop wasting my time!” Discretion is the better part of valor, and in the case of this Tonka, it was also the path of least resistance. Our reply on Google was relevant, but generic, and in the very public world of Google reviews, demonstrating responsiveness and willingness to discuss the issue were paramount.

All in a day’s work, but Dylan wasn’t done with me. Several months back, I left my Essex Continental with him for a respray. Nothing too fancy, just some fresh metallic blue and a few body holes filled up to delete emblems and bodyside moldings. Or so I thought.

“Sajeev, you should come by after work. I have a surprise for you.”

And there it was, parked atop the famous “Saturn Sendoff” runway. This was where customers of GM’s import-centric brand were given a ceremonial farewell for buying a Saturn product. Dylan did more than just a collision center respray; the end result was closer to a show car finish. The quality spoke volumes, but Dylan didn’t know that was Saturn’s Sendoff driveway until I played archeologist and historian on his behalf. Apparently he never forgot that conversation.

In some twisted way, looking at my freshly-painted car on this slab of concrete was a spiritual experience. My soul felt the ritual that thousands of freshly minted Saturn owners experienced. I was eerily delighted by the echoes of applause from long-gone Saturn employees thanking me for their business. This place is more than a collision center—it was hallowed ground for Saturn’s true believers.

I admired my near-flawless Lincoln Continental in the setting sun of Saturn’s sendoff runway. The alliances I made as a Reputation Manager were clearly strong. Consider it a perk of the job, one you’ll never see listed on LinkedIn or Indeed. Becoming a force that eases the service worker’s burden in the car business is a tall order, but you will be rewarded with similar acts of kindness for your effort.

The Reputation Manager will return…