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" Our Saab was a boon to our mechanic, and a curse to us. The first week after we took delivery of the 110,000-mile veteran, the transmission and assorted other essentials gave out--$4,500 in repairs. Three years and the GDP of Togo later, the car gasped its last. One snowy Saturday morning, we were on our way to my son&amp;#039;s first guitar recital when the car expired under an overpass on the fourteen-lane Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. I pointed the family toward a Subaru dealership four blocks away and sloshed my way in the other direction in search of a tow truck. I arrived at the dealership a little after 11:00 A.M. My wife had already picked out the new car, a silver Forester, our four-wheel-drive dreamboat. A towering, friendly salesman named Skip greeted me.  &amp;quot;Can we finish this deal by 11:45?&amp;quot; I asked. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know,&amp;quot; Skip said. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never sold a car in half an hour.&amp;quot; He sat us down and opened his inventory log. He had six Foresters. He took a deep breath. &amp;quot;I want to sell a car,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;You want to buy a car. Here&amp;#039;s my cost. I&amp;#039;ll sell you one for 1 1/2 percent over invoice. I&amp;#039;ll make $350. Sound fair?&amp;quot; Skip&amp;#039;s number matched the best price on the Internet. A check and a credit search later, we were done. Thirty-three minutes in all. Skip handed over the keys.  I&amp;#039;ve still got the Saab. If Skip had been a bastard, I&amp;#039;d feel better about the song and dance needed to resell it. Now I don&amp;#039;t have any pain to pass on, dammit.  If you have a good story about a negotiation won or lost, please send it to us via esquiremag.com/war-stories. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/money/a4264/saab-story-0700/>