Sam Giammalvo
  "No one in the whole world is driving a new car, including the president," stated Sam.

 One doesn't have to go to great lengths to locate someone selling used cars. Dealers are showcasing their trade-in, neighborhood lots and sprawling plazas on back roads and busy streets throughout the South Coast. A quick look in the local phone book turns up over 100 dealers under the "Automobile Dealers - Used Car" heading. By most accounts, the volume of second-hand cars these dealers sell collectively will more than double the volume of new cars being sold over the same period.

This might seem to be reason enough for someone to opt for going into business selling used cars versus opening up a new car franchise for a major automaker. But to hear several local dealers tell their story, there's more of an explanation than that.

The lineup of late model cars at Sam Giammalvo's Auto Sales in New Bedford seems to shine no matter what the weather. For over for forty years, Sam has built himself a solid reputation for offering only the highest quality used cars (or pre-owned as they are more delicately called sometimes).

He is a medium sized business with no more thank 60 cars or so split between two lots that straddle Purchase Street not far from downtown New Bedford. Over the years, he's had his opportunities to run with the bigger players and even opened a new car dealership, but for him, selling new cars was a trip over to the dark side.

In the back of my mind, I thought the new car dealership [Toyota Franchise] was going to be something," said Sam. "What I found out was. . ."

At that point he reached into a filing cabinet and pulled out a time-worn advertisement clipping to make his point. He noted how the ad featured a new vehicle with an unbelievably low price. In the fine print the ad stated that the model was available in the color of the buyers choice. "This is one of the many insane tricks and chicanery," Sam explained.

The advertisement  wasn't intended to sell a car at that price, according to Sam. It was meant to lure potential customers to the dealership where they would be persuaded to buy something more expensive that was immediately available rather then wait for shipment of the advertised vehicle in the color of their choice.

For Sam, it was a question of integrity. He felt that with selling new cars, he had to consistently battle to not deceive his customers. He was a happier man selling used cars when he wasn't beholding to the marketing plans of the manufacturer. "It became such a high power and competitive industry - they just wanted the sale now - they had to resort to deceptive advertising," he said. "It was a field I wasn't used to. It wasn't me."

So Sam has built a career advocating the advantages of buying good quality, late model, used cars. He'll tell you that one of the best reasons to buy used is value. "If you buy a used car today for $20,000, you could sell it tomorrow for 20,000," he said. "But a new car depreciates immediately after the sale." 

Consequently, as soon as a buyer drives that new car off the lot, it is a used car from that point on. "No one in the whole world is driving a new car, including the president," observed Sam.