About 2,000 – 3,000 are auctioned off in a span of only 3 to 4 hours! So when your car comes up, you only have about 1 – 2 minutes before the bidding is over!  You have to think fast and strategic if you want to win.

Some key terms I have learned from these auctions are:

Salvage Title – the car has been deemed “totaled” by an insurance company and is no longer safe to drive.  This car will not be able to be insured by any insurance company.

Reconditioned Title – the car has been deemed “totaled” by an insurance company and was giving a Salvage title. Then someone rebuilt the car to make it look and run like new again.  They can then apply for a Reconditioned Title, which will allow them to sell the vehicle and it can be re-insured at a much much higher rate!  (We at Motorphilia NEVER buy cars with Salvage or Reconditioned Titles)

Curbstoning – this is a very risky practice that hurts consumers and individual dealers alike.  Curbstoning occurs when an individual buys vehicles at volumes that require a dealer’s license and then pose as a private seller to gain large profits off unaware buyers.  They may sell these vehicles on such sites as Craigs List or in parking lots of strip malls.  The sellers draw people in with tags showing low mileage but do not disclose any mechanical or title issues. Once the vehicle is sold, it is nearly impossible to track down the seller.  The buyer will have no recourse against the seller at this point.  This practice not only greatly harms consumers but also damages the reputation of legitimate dealers.   To read more about this practice, visit www.StopCurbstoning.com

The major lesson of this week is – ALWAYS get a title report for any vehicle before you make your purchase!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Alyssa at Motorphilia

If you are looking for any size SUV and want to know which ones will save you money on gas, check out this site!

http://www.fuelefficientsuvguide.com/

It’s nice to know that we can still haul the same amount of stuff and be less harmful to the environment. The education continues!

If you have an SUV on this list, please post your thoughts and experiences!

Alyssa At Motorphilia

2009 Lexus RX 350

I am a female in my late 20s and up to this point have not been a car fanatic.  Actually, I’ve never really been interested or that into cars my whole life. So isn’t it quite odd that now I am working in the car industry?!!  I met Aaron when I purchased my car from him.  Shortly after I found out he was needing a business manager to help with the office tasks.  As I have a degree in Business Admin and Finance from UT, I thought it sounded like the perfect job!

I’ve been working for Aaron and Motorphilia now for 3 weeks and really enjoying it! I think his business model is fascinating and am excited to learn more. It’s also getting me more interested in cars by just listening to his knowledge and going to the dealer auto auctions.  Who knew there were so many different makes and models and differences in the models from year to year!  I’ve even learned that just because it might be a Jaguar, it may have Ford parts! Do most people know these things?! I’ve got a lot of learning and catching up to do!

Through this blog I would like to share what I am learning and how I am progressing with my auto education.

Please feel free to help in my education and post links or facts you think a car newbie should or needs to know!! You can also find me on Facebook and post stuff on my wall.

Alyssa At Motorphilia

1885 Benz Patent Motorwagen

Love doesn’t work out too well when we’re armor plated.

In a reply to one of my blog posts on C.S. Lewis (http://motorphilia.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/to-avoid-love-is-to-find-hell-cslewis-explains/#comments), I saw this today:

“As someone who has had their heart broken 8 times trying to find love, the most recent just today, I have to say that C.S. Lewis was wrong.

He seems to forget that losing love, that pain… IS HELL!! So, basically I am damned either way. At least I won’t have to go through the rejection any more.

Let my heart shrivel and die, let me not feel a thing. I would rather be numb than in pain, better callous than cursed.”

So here are my thoughts . . .

The hardest thing to do is love like you have never been hurt before.

If you keep finding that you get hurt over and over again, stop searching and take time to heal.

If you keep swinging from one person to the next you aren’t looking for love, but more of a fix to feel something.

You’re not “cursed” but if this pattern repeats itself, you should look into yourself and see how you might be affecting the outcome.

I know of a great girl who is a good example of self-sabotaging her relationships because she’s always in fear of the person she is in love with leaving her. She doesn’t see this, but her fear has pushed away some great guys . . . and I know from past experience, that I am not much better at this and I’ve committed to learn my way out of this.

It takes a lot of faith to love someone . . . more than you think you could ever have. By loving someone deeply though all that comes, we learn how to love others better and how to become better people.

What I have learned so far is “Hang in there.”

It’s more than a cliche or some thoughtless advice that a person tosses your way instead of listening . . . it’s actually a way of life.

I’ve also learned that self pity will take me no where.

My best advice to everyone is: If you love anything or anyone, don’t ever ever ever ever ever give up. . . all things that are of great value don’t come easy and they are hard to find.

This is what makes them special.

I’ve felt the feelings this person is expressing and it’s hard to believe now, but I’ve found that they are a myth . . . a hoax . . . and not real.

They come from you asking, “what does this person give to me?”, but not from “what can I do to help this person?”

The only thing we can do, is choose to love better . . . if you need help, I’ve found that Corinthians 13 does a good job of giving the template of true love.

A wise man once said to me, “Loneliness is the illusion we are tricked into feeling when we stop thinking of others and only of ourselves . . . it’s a disease and we can fight it the moment we chose to put others before us.”

If you don’t believe me . . . try it . . . don’t talk about it . . . help others and find connection and never ever give up.

You’ll find that if you keep working on “you” instead of hunting down new people, you’re going to find someone wonderful who love’s “you” just as much as you do.

Last thought . . . how can you love others as you love yourself if you don’t even love yourself yet?

Get it?

So, starting off, I’m into using the internet for promotion like crazy, but mainly for my own interests. I don’t care to hock Viagra or sell other people’s stuff.

I’ve been toying with putting together a marketing company focusing on SEO and Design to some degree . . . but my main interest is photography and cars . . .

I’ve been into cars since high school and it’s been a passion since . . . and it’s also how I pay the bills.

I started selling cars when I first moved to Austin because my student loans did not go through for law school . . . apparently, although broke as anything, I came from a family that was too wealthy to get approved.

Since I needed cash right away, I found an add for getting a guaranteed $3000 for selling cars at Maxwell Dodge for four weeks . . . so I hopped on that opportunity right away.

I hated working there more than anything . . .

Side fact: I was an odd child so my school once had me tested . . . . Apparently, my IQ is nearly as high as Albert Einstein’s or Plato’s (which totally sucks, because now look where the bar is?).

Anyhow, I think this makes my tolerance for stupid short and there was lots of stupid everywhere.

I was up to my eyeballs in stupid . . . I learned quickly on how NOT to run a company there and I left rejoice fully after 3 months.

So since I could not get financial aid for Law School, I decided to enroll into the Air Force and become an officer . . . the process was long though so I had to find work again.

So I started selling Toyotas . . . they drew a better client base, but they were miserable people. . . Seemed mainly people concerned with money and the saving of it.

These are the same people who have missionary sex once a week at best and use calculators during foreplay . . . passionless and vapid at best.

I realized that each brand seemed to draw a certain type of personality with it (in general) . . .

So far Dodges brought idiots and Toyotas drew CPAs . . .

I stored that gem of knowledge for later . . .

I tired quickly of selling cars and walked away from my Toyota gig to find something else . . .

A week later I was at Dell.

I learned a shitload from Dell . . . mainly; time IS money and saving time makes money.

I also learned how to narrow down options for customers and how to lock down deals quickly and cleanly without issue . . . because it’s always easier to tie up all of the loose ends while the bull is still in the shoot

The last thing I learned is that people need guidance because they are clueless in the end and a confident and caring voice will almost always win their favor.

I was Dells #1 sales rep . . . so one year after I was hired; I was rewarded by getting fired . . .

I accidentally gave an old lady free shipping . . .

A year later the guy who fired me was fired (go figure).

Three days later I was selling Toyotas (and hating it!) . . . The next month I got a job working with the Austin Chamber of Commerce pushing add space for a directory for commercial real estate . . .

I got to hobnob with some bigger players, but I just used it as a way to get in with the heads of other companies so I could bypass the standard hiring procedures . . . via this route, I set up an “appointment” to meet the owner of “BMW of Austin” and a month later I was hired.

In the first two weeks I was their top sales person ( I used all of my contacts from my commercial real estate gig) and the following year I led the store in profit, sales, customer satisfaction, and I started a whole new department just for eBay . . .

By my second year I had my own department with my own staff and my own building dedicated to eBay and in my second year I started selling exotic cars — starting with a whopper $30,000.00 profit on a Porsche Turbo that was traded in.

Normally, our store just wholesaled these cars out to their respective dealers, but with my eBay department we had a way of finding buyers who would not typically come to our store.

Cars are sold all of the time now on eBay, but I actually was one of the first and in 2004 my eBay store was the second highest grossing store next to The Sharper Image.

Anyhow, cutting to where I am now…. I’m starting all over again.

There were some issues within my company involving egos and people who were jealous of me and what I was doing and the amount of freedom and power I was trusted with over anyone else there.

In the end, the only authority who had any bearing over me was the owner.

I saw what was happening and instead of letting this growing animosity tear away at the owner (who is my friend); I offered to buy out the eBay department and move it off site.

The owner agreed and sold me the rights and all of the equipment for pennies on the dollar.

I decided to completely redo how an auto dealership works and as I was doing this, I was chosen to be eBay and Google’s government liaison for auto dealers on the internet and I helped write a bill that legitimized auto sales via the internet solely (before, customers HAD to sign at a building, but with this law passed, it freed up that requirement and the last road block to my store was out of the way).

I started Motorphilia 6 weeks later.

In this business plan I decided to do away with all of the over head of maintaining an inventory and lot space and decided to use the internet to allow me to turn cars quickly and distribute them worldwide.

There is a second phase in place for my company, but as of right now we’ve hit some growing pains . . . one, my accounting sucks; and two, this financial crisis hit the same time we were renewing our credit lines for buying inventory . . . this made buying new inventory difficult for about 6 weeks (and right now we are feeling the fallout of this and it hurts).

The outlook is good and the business model is solid . . . I’m still learning a lot, but in the end, I do love it and believe it is the future of how cars will be bought and sold.

Anyhow, this is a long answer . . . . So this is how I got involved with cars.

(And indirectly became a professional studio photographer and a pretty skilled web sleuth.)

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very
clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes
we’ve learned something from yesterday.”

“Women have the right to work wherever they want, as long as they have the
dinner ready when you get home”

“Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.”
“If you’ve got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.”
“A man ought to do what he thinks is right”
“If everything isn’t black and white, I say, "Why the hell not?"”
“Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.”
“A horse is a horse,it ain´t make a difference what color it is.”
“Healthy, lusty sex is wonderful”

“Never say sorry – it’s a sign of weakness”

“I’m the stuff men are made of”
“I stick to simple themes. Love. Hate. No nuances. I stay away from
psychoanalyst’s couch scenes. Couches are good for one thing.”

“I’ve had three wives, six children and six grandchildren and I still don’t
understand women”

“Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.”

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one,     not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.What I know about love and believe about love and giving ones heart began in this.

In short, to love is to risk and we will feel pain when we love . . . but the alternate of not letting go and feeling free to love is a worse place to be.

In the end, above all else, feel free to love and love without question.

Only then, will we experience true love . . . swing for the fences kiddos, we’ve got a lot of life left ahead of us!

I decided to make this graphic to share with a friend, then I decided to share it with all of you.

(just click on the image below to enlarge and feel free to save this, it’s my gift to all of you)

I just did and I ran across this. It’s pretty neat. Click on the image below to see the full illustration

I went to go see Cloverfiled last night and I saw this trailer and I am hooked.
You have me at “Iron Man” Mr. Favreau — I loved the tings you’ve graced so far – ”Swingers“
and “Elf” (GENIUS!).

Now onto Iron Man — he’s like Batman, but far cooler, metal-ier, and he can fly . . . Ok, actually, Batman is sort of lame next to Iron Man. (But I still love you Batman, don’t cry.)

Look, they’re both billionaires both have cool gadgets, but Iron Man is more flawed. He’s actually a dying man in a suit. He’s weak, he’s an alcoholic, he’s a little bit more of assh*le — he’s more real,
but then he’s not.

There is a better human element, with more flaws to him.

Bruce Wayne has a trouble psyche due to his shattered past. Tony Stark (catch the “iron”y in the last name) has just so much more against him– but here he is, frail but powerful.

He’s more than a modern Achilles, his weakness is his own health (at least in the comic). I hope they bring this to the movie and I feel that they will, it makes for a much better screen play.

Ok, this is just speculation, but in the battle of Batman vs. Iron Man this summer, Iron Man will trump the “Caped Crusader” with a far a more developed character, better story line, and bada** gizmos galore. 

This is also one reason Marvel Comic has seen such incredible growth in the past decade. Stan Lee has really done an incredible job at making heroes that are more believable and they are all flawed with human error.

Superman sucks, he’s cool because he’s unstoppable, but then Kryptonite? What they hell is that. I’ve never fallen to that who has? But Marvel characters have pain, deep pain, loss, addictions, and they have a dark side that they battle with in — this is human.

Anyhow, that aside Iron Man must be seen . . . Oh,and the video game looks epic.

Check out these clips:

The Trailer:

The Game: