Do you advertise for your dealer?

[AM6_Cutlass]

Just curious how many of you leave the dealer advertising on the vehicles you own. The stickers/emblems, license plates and frames, or other... My cars don't have any dealer advertising on them. Sometimes I really don't understand why people keep that stuff on, so if you do please explain. Especially if you buy a used car from Enterprise car sales or something. Why would you want people to know you bought a used rental car?

For some reason they didn't put anything on my Impala when I bought it used from a Chevy dealer, which I thought was odd. No rear frame or sticker, and no front plate even though the front bumper had already been drilled by the previous owner/selling dealer. I would have taken it all off anyway if they had. The funny thing is they put all of those things on my Cutlass when they put it on thier used lot.

The Olds dealer I bought the Cutlass from gave me a front plate, which I replaced with an Oldsmobile plate after about a month. I kept the frame around the rear plate for about three years (until I got a new state issued plate and had to take it all apart anyway), since the dealer I bought it from was about an hour from where I live... sort of an anti-advertisement towards the local Olds dealers that sucked. I also got no sticker/emblem from them.

The Alero was purchased from a used only lot, the sticker and plate frame were gone within 24 hours from purchase.

[frogger]

I always remove any dealer ads

[Northstar]

Well, on my car I have nothing, but on our other cars we do have dealer tags. I guess no one else cares, plus on the other cars the dealer tag is much less ugly and simpler than it was on my car.

[zhawk]

I remove the dealership stuff almost as soon as I get into my driveway.

[Cory Wolfe]

The dealer plate frame was removed within days of when I bought my Milly.

[Ravenfreak13]

Yeah...the saturn and breeze both have their dealer plate frames...i even sprayed the saturn one silver.

[scharmer05]

They are all off my Impala, but my Suburban still has part of it on there. The dealer I bought it from, Swanson's, uses this cool little raised emblem that looks like a curvy road disappearing into the distance for the "S." I left the Swanson on the back but took off the "Chevy-Buick-Pontiac" and the "Cavalier, ND" that was below it. Besides the fact that I think it still looks pretty good, I know the owners of the dealer. That and the fact that it is a small town dealer, convinced me to leave part of it on there.

[FAPTurbo]

Heh. The dealer emblem on my Sierra is STILL on it.

It's only on the tailgate, and doesn't stick out much or anything. Plus, since the truck is running nice and clean for almost 17 years, it's likely good advertising.

Edited March 30, 2007 by Captainbooyah

[bobo]

In California, dealers tend not to put any tacky permanent chrome badging on cars and instead rely on the license plate frames. I kept the one on the Lexus because it's decent looking. The Silverado strangely didn't come with a dealer frame.

[GMTruckGuy74]

If I buy a car right off the lot, I'll remove the dealer sticker as soon as I get it home. When I've ordered my cars, I requested no dealer sticker to be put on (I've encountered the "well, I'll have to get my manager's approval first" line many times). My car, no free advertising! The exception to that rule is that I've allowed the dealer license plate frame to remain on my two Saturns so far, since I've been really happy with the dealership in general. However, I'm considering getting engraved frames for all three of my vehicles, so the Saturn dealer ones may soon go away.

But no, usually I don't advertise a dealership for free. I'm paying them for the car, they should pay me if they want me to flaunt their name around. One dealership actually told me that is how they recognize their customers cars while in the shop from ones not purchased from them - they pull those cars out to handle their own customers first. I told them that was crazy - since I didn't just own the brands they sold & would have taken my other car to them for service too, I had horrible images of my car not being serviced b/c it wasn't bought from them. I never used them for service and never returned again to buy from them.

I'm surprised we haven't heard from all the salespeople on the forum yet on this topic.

[pow]

Never had a dealership sticker... but I keep most of their plates on... chiefly because I'm too cheap to buy a proper blank one.

[ocnblu]

Always take it off, clutters up the vehicle. Plus, I found out that the owner of my workplace hates the owner of the GMC dealership, so there was a bit of self-preservation at work.

When I ordered my Sierra, I asked the salesdude not to let them put their sticker on... the cleanup kid did it anyway, so I had them remove it before I took it off the lot.

[Dragon]

nope. when I bought my $h!fire, I told the dealer not to put it on.

[CARBIZ]

Well, I think everyone has pretty much summed up the general state of attitudes on this board toward dealers! Clearly, none of you have had good experiences or had any sort of a relationship with the dealer. That is a shame, really. The dealer can be your best friend in a tussle with GM, a warranty company, or whatever, but if you hop around just to save $5 every time you buy something you're never going to get to that point.

Our dealer puts a small, styled name in vinyl on the back of every vehicle. Very, very few people complain. I suspect most people don't care, but the heavy posters on this board are not MOST people, ha, ha!

It isn't really about free advertising, although I would point out that if any of YOU guys bought a car, you probably do owe the dealer because they wouldn't have made anything off of you! LOL It is more about pride in what you bought and where you bought it. I agree that garish, tacky name badges have no place ( remember our dealer used to use big, ugly plastic chrome ones about 15 years ago), but a subtle name lettering is harmless.

Of course, if you stole the car from them and don't want them to find it easily, then you should take it off.

[Camino LS6]

For me it's nothing personal against the dealer, I just hate extra stickers and emblems on my cars. I usually order my vehicles and specify that none of that stuff be put on them in the first place. I have a great relationship with the local Chevy store and promote them to people all the time, I just don't want the advertising junk messing-up the look of my cars. In fact, my Silverados lost those hideous "4X4" stickers the moment I got them home and my '86 Monte Carlo SS lost all of that nasty tricolor striping as soon as I could get the job done. I hate it when manufacturers or dealers crap-up the look of a car with that cheap junk. I did leave the plate frame on the Duramax though - you would hardly notice it.

[Flybrian]

Our Bonneville still has it on because its red and relatively unobtrusive and otherwise too much trouble to get off. I took it off my Aurora because - though the decal itself was okay - on my car, it looked garish and took up way too much room. Plus, it says 'Scott Buick' when its an Oldsmobile, which merely screams to everyone 'I BOUGHT USED!!!!!' In any case, the dealer folded up a year or so ago, so what's the point?

[staceface]

absolutely YES! (considering I work at my dealership!) LOL I've only had two customers request that the dealership logo be left off, and one of them was my MOM for crying out loud.

[caddycruiser]

Peeled the trunk sticker and front plate off my '95 Fleetwood (it was big orange letters for a used car lot, so not the best look, and screamed USED LOT, like Frybrian mentioned), my dad scraped the black dealer name decal off his Roadmaster, and we also peeled the dealer sticker off the tailgate of mom's Avalanche merely because not that it looked bad but more that it had an air bubble and was already loose.

On the other hand, we've kept the dealer logo on the corner of the tailgate of mom's Suburban for almost 3 years now, and I'm not sure why really. Probably because it's the local dealer who does all the service and it's actually very small and classy (if that's possible for a sticker), and was put on well. At least makes it more recognizable to the dealer, when it would go in, that it was bought from them. Either way, it actually looks good and is small, so we keep it.

Otherwise, it all depends. Most of the time I really can't stand them--especially when it's like some local dealers who have a big supply of cars out where it looks like they had a toddler slap all the stickers on slanted or in weird places. Just depends.

Oh! Just thought of a good one, though. One of our neighbors has a new Kia Sedona van. The dealer it came from uses stick-on molded blacks that are silver and black 3D's of their name and Kia. The WEIRD part? There's one in a normal spot on the tailgate, then another identical one 6 inches above it. Not usually something I'd even notice, but it just looks so strange and they've kept it like that for over a year, I've always been tempted to just peel one off when I'm out or at least ask them why it's like that...if they even notice.

Edited March 30, 2007 by caddycruiser

[Cory Wolfe]

Well, I think everyone has pretty much summed up the general state of attitudes on this board toward dealers! Clearly, none of you have had good experiences or had any sort of a relationship with the dealer. That is a shame, really. The dealer can be your best friend in a tussle with GM, a warranty company, or whatever, but if you hop around just to save $5 every time you buy something you're never going to get to that point.

Our dealer puts a small, styled name in vinyl on the back of every vehicle. Very, very few people complain. I suspect most people don't care, but the heavy posters on this board are not MOST people, ha, ha!

It isn't really about free advertising, although I would point out that if any of YOU guys bought a car, you probably do owe the dealer because they wouldn't have made anything off of you! LOL It is more about pride in what you bought and where you bought it. I agree that garish, tacky name badges have no place ( remember our dealer used to use big, ugly plastic chrome ones about 15 years ago), but a subtle name lettering is harmless.

Of course, if you stole the car from them and don't want them to find it easily, then you should take it off.

Perhaps people would just rather not have a tacky advertisement on their car? Those people who don't care, probably don't care about their car in the first place. I think if someone has a good dealership experience, word of mouth is more useful than a tacky decal or badge stuck to trunk. I don't see many people who, after seeing that on a car, goes "OMG!!!! THAT DECAL HAS CHANGED MY LIFE!!!! I'M SOOOO GOING TO BUY A CAR AT THAT DEALER JUST BECAUSE I SAW THIS DECAL!!!! OMG!!!!!". You know? Edited March 30, 2007 by blackviper8891

[z28luvr01]

I have a rear license plate frame on mine. I don't mind it really, though I'll probably replace it with a nicer frame at some point. It's a good thing I didn't buy a truck from them, because they install rear mudflaps with their logo on them. I just don't want something permanently attached to the rear of my car. I do my share of spreading the word about the good experiences I have with my dealer, which IMO is more effective than the ad itself.

[ToniCipriani]

No. I explicitly asked them to not put the sticker on my car. Replacing all those are emblems of University of Waterloo on my plates, and an UW Engineering plate frame.

[ShadowDog]

My decal is still on the car for two reasons:

1) I don't give a $h!;

2) Neither does anybody else.

My wife works at the dealership we bought our car from, but nobody there would care if we ever took it off. My car is in mint-condition for being three years old. I just completed a cleaning and even shampoo'd the mats. The interior is absolutely spotless. This should serve well to go against the notion that just because people don't take dealer decals off their car that they don't care about their purchase. Rediculous. Sometimes, there's just being a little too anal about insignificant things that the average person wouldn't give a second thought to.

Edited March 30, 2007 by ShadowDog

[Oracle of Delphi]

Nope, I tell the dealer my advertising fee is 2000 dollars off my bottom line for 3 months worth of advertising. You should see how they run to get that crap off my car. My current dealer knows better than to even do it.