a few weeks ago i was visiting my parents and caught a little bit of a documentary they had on.

it all became clear as day.

apparently in the 70s used car salesmen would manipulate the odometers in cars they were selling to make the cars appear to have really low mileage. they would also do other random stuff like put saw dust in the transmission to hide any kind of knocking noises.

the media started doing investigations into this which led to laws making those kind of things illegal.

they had tons of interviews with various owners of the car lot chains who were eventually found guilty of things like rolling back odometers. and every single one of them sounded sleazy and confident. every single one of these guys who were caught red handed blamed the buyers saying things like:

“it’s not my fault they bought a shit car.”

we allowed a bunch of greasy slimey used car salesmen to take over. slimey used car salesmen in quarter-zips who sound confident.