UnNews:Car Dealer Announces National Used Car Screening Day

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

8 October 2007

Well I can see your insecure about your car, this makes you sad. You want a true American car, well we've got a mint condition Chevy right out back. The engine is extra.

Bubba Motors, Oklahoma City's largest Oldsmobile dealer, held the first annual "National Used Car Screening Day" on September 29th. Bubba Johnson, proprietor, put the event together after reading about National "Depression" Screening Day on the Internet.

"Heck, if drug companies can pretend to screen people for mental illness just to get new customers and sell drugs, we can do it too," says Mr. Johnson. "At one time I had some respect for the psychiatric community but eventually I learned that they don't have any real science, they are just good salesmen. If any psychiatrists or drug company fellers get tired of drugging people into profitability, I'm can put them to work selling Oldsmobiles."

Customers who came to National Used Car Screening day were given a 10-15 minute computerized test with such questions as "Has there been a time when you felt like your car wasn't as good as other people's cars?" and "Have you ever thought about just smashing your old heap into a tree?

Bubba points out that these questions are pretty similar to the questions used on "mental health" screening tests. "Yeah, I was looking for teenage car movies and ended up finding TeenScreen, this New York City outfit that does screening to get kids they can turn into customers. You wouldn't believe the questions they ask young children!

"Here at Bubba Motors, we have always been at the forefront of the latest marketing techniques. We've had the free pizza, and the Hooters Girls, even the Chippendale boys, well, once, but that didn't really go over all that well. Anyhow, this whole screening thing looked like a real good marketing campaign to me so I decided to give it a go."

"You see, what these psychiatric shysters do is they ask questions about people's lives, designed to make people worried and introverted. Then you have a huckster, um, I mean 'mental health professional' on hand to explain to the them that they are worried and introverted, and that they can fix it with only tens of thousands of dollars worth of therapy, or with a pill."

Bubba Motors offers the "patients" relief from made up disorders like "Jalopy-Related Depression", "Repair-Bill Overwhelm", "Driving Deficit Disorder" by selling them cars, SUVs and minivans costing tens of thousands of dollars. The event was a great success, with an increase in sales of about 40%.

"A lot of people are upset with me for using fake science just to sell cars," says Bubba. "But I hope to get away with it for a while, like the psychiatrists have. I guess eventually people will wise up to what I'm up to and protest my dealership the way they protest TeenScreen, the slimiest of the mental health screening outfits. Maybe they'll even make a petition against me with tens of thousands of signatures!"

Sources

• I. Amsad "Feeling Sad? How about a new car? SUV? Pick erp?" CNN, 7/10/07