I Hate Ken Dixon

My first beef with the Ken Dixon family of auto dealerships is that they insist on putting their emblem on every car they sell. My personally philosophy is I paid for the car; it is now mine. Your dealership name and/or logo will only remain on it if you're paying me some sort of advertising fee.

I always hate this, but Ken Dixon is an offender on two different fronts: First, it's not just a license plate frame or a sticker or something, but an actual metallic emblem adhered to the vehicle. The frames come right off and stickers can be peeled away, but for the stupid emblems you have to get out the heat gun, warm up the adhesive, carefully pull it away without scratching the paint, then re-polish the spot where it was. Second, the emblem is just the "Ken Dixon" logo. My Neon had a dealer sticker on it when Jim bought it, but at least that was clearly the auto dealership. It said "Hart City Dodge" or something of the sort ("Hart" city being a reference to Elkhart, IN, "The city with a heart"). The Ken Dixon emblem just says "Ken Dixon." Not even "Ken Dixon Honda" or "Ken Dixon Auto Group." How arrogant do you have to be to just put your own name on every car you sell? Plus, it's written in a really lame script, and the "i" is dotted with a freaking star! What is this, 2nd grade? Why doesn't he just dot it with a heart or smiley face?

Apart from the offenses of the logo itself, they seem to be applied with all the care of an airport baggage handler. The one on my car was tilted at least 10 degrees from horizontal. My buddy Mike's theory is that the script font makes it hard to align, but that's just more reason to change it or get rid of it altogether.

Back to my main point. Since I was driving back from the airport on Thursday anyway, I made an appointment to bring my car in for the one-year/15,000 mile service at the dealership. I'm not sure what all it entailed, but I know oil changing and tire rotating were involved. I got there late because of the freak Texas ice storm, but they still helped me out and it was totally dark outside by the time my car was done. I immediately thought my steering was a little funny, but I wasn't sure. Kate and I have already established that the Ken Dixon service department can't breathe on a vehicle without screwing up the alignment, so I should've turned around right there and then. But, I was lazy and kept going home. The next day I let Kate drive a little ways, and she agreed that the car was pulling left, so I told the dealership that I would be bringing it back as soon as I could. Then Sunday morning I stopped to get gas, and as I stood at the pump I noticed that the problem might not be my alignment, but the fact that my left front tire was almost completely flat! We're not talking a little low- I mean the rim was almost on the pavement. I immediately drove to the air pump to fill it up, and it registered less than 10 psi! My tires are supposed to be 35 to 40, and the rest were all hovering around 20. What the hell? Not only had I driven the car about 100 miles like that, but I know "tire pressure" was one of the things they claimed to check.

All the more reason not to trust car dealers!