“It was just a beautiful day in January.
Bob was driving us to the airport and I had this beautiful white convertible.
It was a nice little convertible, a convertible with a rear spoiler, and he was driving around the parking lot and I remember looking at the windshield wipers and thinking, this is it.
We’re going to get this in.
And so I just took my car to the dealership.
I said, ‘I need a pair of Bob’s tires.’
I looked at the price tag, I thought, $1,200.
And the salesman said, well, $250 is too much.
That’s too much for these tires.
So I just said, you know, I’ll pay $200 for them and I’ll take the car to Bob’s for two bucks.
He was driving a nice old Cadillac.
He’s the one that built the Rolls Royce and the Rolls-Royce Phantom.
So he knew everything.
And I took the car and I went up there, and I was driving him around the lot, and the salesman told me he’d give me five bucks.
I don’t know if I said that right, but I thought it was like, ‘Oh, you can get five bucks for the tires.
I know what it is.
This is going to be great.’
And so he came out of the dealership with two pairs of tires.
That was it.
I never thought about that in my life, but it was a really nice day.
It wasn’t like, what the hell, I got a car, I have a good relationship with Bob, we can do this.’
And it turned out to be a very successful day.
And they did the same thing with the Corvette.
So it’s just a matter of, if you have a relationship with a tire company, it’s going to happen.”
– Bob’s tire sales manager (via NRO)