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September 19 - October 3, 2014
Yakima valley readers have chosen Brian Harris Used Cars in Selah
as the Valley's Best. Pictured are (left to right) Guillermo Peralta, Fran
Harris and Brian Harris.
hired hands do the washing for you
professionally. You can sit right there
in the car and enjoy the ride as magic
brushes and water blasters and whirling buffers remove all that topsoil
from your machine. Heck, you might
even splurge on a wax job.
If you’re really going for it, you
can get your vehicle detailed — that’s
where they scrub it inside and out.
The vacuum up all those petrified
French fries and cookie crumbs from
the back seat, scour all the spilled
lattes from the carpet, clean the
windows so you can actually see out
of them again (and all this time you
thought they were tinted!) and generally make the car look and smell like
new, removing all traces of you and
your slovenly habits.
We’re taking bets on how long it
Yakima Valley
BUSINESS TIMES
BEST OF THE VALLEY PART 1
stays that way.
Spanky’s Car Wash in Yakima
wins this category again, ahead of
second-place Pro Clean Auto Detail
and third-place Splash Express Car
Wash.
Some other reader picks include
Elephant Car Wash and GTO Car
Wash.
BEST USED CAR LOT: Maybe
you haven’t noticed this, but new
cars are getting to be a bit expensive.
Heck, life is getting expensive. That’s
one reason so many drivers choose to
shop for bargains in the “previously
owned” category — i.e., used cars.
You can save a lot of money buying a used vehicle. You can also wind
up buying somebody else’s headaches. After all, there might be a reason someone else unloaded that car
in the first place. Maybe a late-model
luxury SUV with only 8,000 miles on
the odometer has such low mileage
because the original owner couldn’t
get it to run….
People who sell used cars have a
pretty tacky image among the general
public. There’s the old line about
someone who looks shifty — usually a politician: “I’m not saying the
guy’s a crook, but I wouldn’t buy a
used car from him.”
That’s partly because there are
some pretty shady characters selling used cars. It’s hard to feel good
about a car lot called Ricky’s Rigs
R Us with eight vehicles parked in
a vacant lot under a tree, supervised
by a salesman sitting in a lawn chair
beside a cooler of beer.
The general mood of someone
shopping used car lots is suspicion.
You tend to walk warily onto the
lot, like a deer entering a clearing in
hunting season. You just know it’s an
ambush.
Much as you’d love to trust your
fellow human beings, it’s
tough when they’re trying
to sell you a car. If
the price seems
reasonable, your
obvious question is: “OK, so
what’s wrong
with it?”
The thing
is, you’ll never
know unless you buy it. The salesman isn’t going to tell you. And it’s
not like Average Joe knows anything
about cars. You can kick the tires,
look under the hood (as if that tells
you anything) and even take it for a
test spin. If the front wheels fall off
or flames come out of the dashboard
you can guess that the car has problems, but otherwise it’s a crapshoot.
Are you feeling lucky, punk?
When you get it home, that’s when
you discover what’s wrong with it.
That’s if the car even makes it home.
People in the used-car business
have to overcome this natural fear
their customers have. The good ones
go out of their way to earn your trust
and set themselves apart from the
Fast Eddies of the world. They’ll be
up front with customers, offer some
kind of limited warranty and stand
behind what they sell.
Every year our readers say that the
best place to get that kind of treatment is Brian Harris Used Cars in
Selah, which wins again this time.
That kind of customer loyalty is what
a good reputation is all about.
Steve Hahn placed second and Trucks Plus
is third.
Other places
our readers
recommend are
Bob Hall Auto
Dealerships,
Auto Max and
Carey Motors.
BEST NEW
CAR LOT: Selling
cars and trucks, used or new, is one
of the most competitive businesses
around. With so many makes and
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Yakima Valley
BUSINESS TIMES
BEST OF THE VALLEY PART 1
Page 55
September 19 - October 3, 2014
ond and Carey Motors was third.
Other top finishers included Lee
Peterson Motors, Bud Clary Toyota
of Yakima and Pingrey Motor Company in Selah.
BEST TRUCK DEALER: I’m
assuming this category is about pickup trucks, not those big 18-wheeler
semis. Most of you don’t buy tractortrailer big rigs, right? That would be
silly.
If you believe TV commercials
models to choose from, consumers
have a lot of options. And the Internet turns every customer into an expert because it’s so easy these days to
do a little research and comparison,
if you can tear yourself away from
those cute kitten videos and X-rated
websites.
A vehicle is usually the second
most expensive thing the average
person owns, next to their home.
And some cars are more expensive
than a lot of homes. So people go
into vehicle transactions with a lot of
suspicion and trepidation.
What you’re really looking for is
at minimum the illusion of a deal.
You need to come away feeling
like you slick-talked the dealer-
tell you.
“Not good enough,” say you, the
savvy, no-nonsense consumer. “I can
do better up the street.”
“How about if I throw in top-ofthe-line tires and a free tank of gas?”
says the sales guy.
“And a free car wash,” you counter.
“Done,” says the sales guy. “Man,
you drive a hard bargain!”
So you drive home in your new
car, feeling like a million bucks
because you out-negotiated a pro and
got a steal of a deal. Sure you did.
When our readers want a good
new-car experience they say Steve
Hahn in Yakima is the place to go.
Bob Hall Auto Dealerships took sec-
(and who doesn’t?) a pickup truck is
almost essential — especially if you
are male and want to be a real man.
And who doesn’t want to be real?
What are you, Pinocchio? It may be
possible to be manly while driving
something other than a pickup truck,
but the odds are against you. Yeah,
I’m talking to you, Mister Macho in
the electric car!
You need a truck — and I mean a
big, real truck, not one of those little
Thank you for voting us as One of the
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Yakima Valley.
Dependability • Integrity • Craftsmanship
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Best Truck Dealer int he Yakima Valley…Trucks Plus. Shown left to
right: Max Madden, Eduardo Reyes, Ricardo Espindola, Ron Schuchardt, Rennae Villanueva, Monica Jones, Jim Garoutte, Ryan Cook, Jonathtan Frausto, and Mike Sayers.
ship and got what you wanted, you
hard-bargaining wheeler-dealer you.
You’re never really getting away with
anything, but if they allow you to feel
smart that’s all you can ask. You call
them suckers, they call you a sucker
and everybody is happy.
There are certain games to be
played when buying a car. First you
look at the sticker price and tell them
it’s too high. They make you an offer
at a lower price. You pretend to think
it over, then say it’s still too high and
you want to try some other dealers.
They ask you to please wait while
they go talk to The Manager and “see
what he can come up with.”
(Spoiler Alert: They never go talk
to The Manager. There probably is no
Manager. They go in the back room,
read a magazine or smoke a butt to
kill time, then come back with The
Manager’s “offer.”)
“He can knock off another $2,000,
but that’s as low as he can go,” they
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BEST REAL ESTATE COMPANY 2014!!!
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CONGRATULATIONS
DEBBIE KRIEGER!
(509) 945-1478
I have worked full-time in real estate in the
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johnlscott.com/74622
1416 Summitview Avenue
Yakima, WA 98902
Office: (509) 248-1970 Fax: (509) 248-0863
Page 56
September 19 - October 3, 2014
BEST OF THE VALLEY PART 1
Yakima Valley
BUSINESS TIMES
THANK YOU TO ALL OUR PATIENTS!
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wannabe trucks — for doing guy
things like hauling bales of hay while
pulling your trailer of Budweiser
Clydesdales around the countryside
or towing an ocean liner up onto dry
ground or plowing through swamps
chasing gators, stuff like that. It has
to be about 30 feet long and stand a
good 15 feet tall, and it better be either red or black because other colors
are for wussies.
And if you don’t do all those
manly things, that doesn’t mean
you can’t get yourself a pickup and
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“Ace is the place with the helpful hardware folks!”
“Thank you everyone for voting us as “The Best
Hardware Store” for the 4th year in a row! We
appreciate your votes and support.
7200 W. Nob Hill Blvld.
(Located in the Meadowbrook Mall Shopping Ctr)
965-2622
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Burgers & Brew
pretend like you do them. Live the
life of Walter Mitty, buddy. Dream a
little. People see you driving around
in a great big super-charged V-12
rig with chrome pipes, they wonder:
“Where’s that guy headed? Probably
off into the mountains to wrestle
bears and dance with wolves. Bet he
gets all the chicks.”
They don’t need to know that
you’re headed to the dry cleaner to
pick up your polo shirts, then off to
the grocery store for some arugula
and chai tea.
When you decide to get with it and
get a truck, readers insist that Trucks
Plus is where you need to go. Pingrey Motor Co. in Selah, last year’s
winner, took second this time. Brian
Harris Used Cars was third.
Some other truckin’ favorites are
Bob Hall Auto Dealerships, Lee Peterson Motors and Bud Clary Toyota
of Yakima.
BEST TIRE STORE: The modern vehicle is a marvel of science
and technology. Compared with cars
from the recent past, today’s versions
are like high-tech spacecraft — everything is run by computers and
sensors and automated gizmos and
whirligigs. Auto manufacturing is
like rocket science.
To people like you and me, it’s
all a lot of hocus pocus and mumbo
jumbo. We have no clue what makes
our car run. There’s only one part of
the whole apparatus we can feel any
remote connection to — the tires.
At least we can see the tires. We
can tell when they appear low on
pressure, and we know how to remedy that: We add air. Problem solved.
If they get low again, we add more
air. We do this until the tire finally
goes completely flat, usually after
midnight in a rainstorm miles from
the nearest outpost of civilization.
Then the person at the tire shop
says: “Well of course it went flat,
you moron! There’s no tread left on
any of these tires. They shoulda been
replaced about 50,000 miles ago, you
dim bulb! You’re lucky to be alive.”
After being chewed out by the tire