Place: Hardee's
Lunch: Western X-TRA Bacon Thickburger, Charbroiled Atlantic Cod Fish Sandwich (no tomato), Coke
The first time I ever heard of Carl's Jr (some twenty years ago, long before they bought Hardee's), it was via a coupon that included some sandwich images. The one that caught my eye was the Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger, specifically because it had onion rings right on it. That was unheard of at the time. And that's what got me in the door. So it's nice to have a version of it at Hardee's right now, even if just for a little while. Especially with extra bacon.
So remember about a year ago when I wrote a post about the musical dealership game going on at one of the local Auto Miles? Well, I'm updating it because this goofiness just hasn't stopped.
The focal point here is the old Pontiac-Buick-GMC building, which used to be the Pontiac-Porsche-Mazda-Subaru building. So here's a quick summary...When the neighboring Buick franchise and the down-the-road GMC franchise were consolidated under one franchise, Mazda moved into the Buick building (acquired from the old Buick franchisee) and Subaru was put into a new addition adjacent to the Mazda..uh, Buick...building. Then that dealer lost the Buick-GMC franchise in GM's government bailout nonsense, got it back a year later, then gave it up a year after that in favor of being a used car super center, while the Fiat dealership up the street moved into the old Hyundai dealership building, who had moved into the old Honda building, who had moved into the old pre-consolidation GMC building, to make way for a new Buick-GMC dealership.
Follow me so far?
Wait...where'd the Porsche dealership go?
Nowhere. We don't have one anymore.
Oh. Bummer.
Yeah. Somebody needs to pick that up.
Okay. So now what's going on?
Mazda and Subaru have moved BACK into the building that was the used car super center, aka the old Buick-GMC dealership, aka the old Pontiac-Porsche-Mazda-Subaru dealership.
Apparently, this was spawned by the need of the neighboring (and not co-owned) Mercedes Benz-BMW dealership to expand. They bought that property from the Pontiac-Porsche-Mazda-Subaru guys, who are now operating their remaining brands in their original footprint. BMW will move over and apparently will have a showcase space for their new electric and hybrid cars, I guess. Separate showrooms for gas BMW's vs electric BMW's, at least that's the impression I got. Why not. The building has two showrooms now.
The Mercedes Benz-BMW guys have a large modern facility they built after moving from downtown around ten years ago. While building the new property, they temporarily operated out of the building that was the Fiat dealership for about five minutes before becoming the current Buick-GMC dealership. When the new building opened, it also was the Volvo and Jaguar dealership, and they had a Land Rover dealership on the frontage. But those three makes are now sold by a completely different franchisee, right across the street.
It's like the Auto Mile for swingers, or something.
Are we done? Is everybody settled? Probably not. I just noticed the Hyundai dealership apparently has a parking problem, because they're overflow parking new cars in the lot of an abandoned restaurant nowhere near their dealership. Or maybe those were Nissans, who are on the other Auto Mile, and who are going through a shakeup of their own.
I have no idea why I'm so fascinated by this.
