[Lassaxi]

I ordered my car around the time that the FMW-Herb Chambers deal was going gown (February '07). Basically, it sounds like what happened was that FMW was essentially an employee-owned company, and a number of the more powerful, older employees and managers, who were either recently retired (and still owned shares) or who are on the brink of retirement supported the buyout because it would give them tremendous value for their shares.

As for the issue of moving to Sudbury, my CA told me that was likely to happen anyway. The current building in Natick has a lot of issues, including that they simply do not have room for both the M-B and BMW dealerships under the same roof. FMW was likely to move to Sudbury anyway over the next couple of years, and I was told that one of the reasons for selling to HC was so that the employee stockholders wouldn't have to foot the bill for the relocation (which is going to be very expensive).

From what I understand, many of the remaining CAs are not pleased at all with what happened. It's a real shame. I went with FMW over BMW of Peabody because FMW could come up with better lease terms. But I very much liked BMW of Peabody as well, and the CA I was working with there was excellent. I think both have a decent reputation for service, and Peabody has a relatively new service center not far from their main showroom that more than doubles the number of cars they can service at one time. I definitely would have bought form them if they had been able to match the lease deal that I got at FMW.

I bought a Honda few years ago from Herb Chambers of Burlington. I will say this about them: Herb Chambers (at least the Honda dealer) is actually a not a terrible place to shop because they are very predictable. They are definitely a "hardball" dealer, and, at least their Honda sales people responded well to hardball tactics. For instance, I wanted certain options on the Civic I was buying, and the sales person at HC told me that he could not get them for me at a price I would be willing to pay. Since the guy was being a complete prick about it, I called a local Toyota dealer from my cell phone while sitting at his desk, and got a quote over the phone for a similarly equipped Corolla. Magically, he was able to find the exact car I wanted for exactly what I wanted to pay.

I did not have to play these sorts of games with the folks at FMW or BMW of Peabody like I did with HC, but if you don't mind playing the games (and I don't), you can walk away with a good deal from HC.