By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

A new car salesman can't sell you a car unless he's sold on it himself. That's why all the car companies around town hold regular briefings for their salesmen (and increasingly saleswomen) when new car season rolls around.

With the Hawai'i Auto Show coming up this week, it seemed like a good idea to stop in on one of those meetings and find out what the salesmen are being told about the cars they'll be trying to sell you and me somewhere down the line.

At Servco Pacific's sprawling Mapunapuna complex one day last month, the company education effort was focused on the new Corollas and the Suzuki Aerio. One (Aerio) is a brand-new model without a track record and an uncertain future; the other (Corolla) is the best-selling car in the history of the world.

Even so, they got equal billing at an employees-only event called a ride-and-drive. In these regularly scheduled sessions, company representatives give everyone from salesmen to secretaries a chance to know the product line inside and out.

The sessions are divided into two unequal parts, classroom and driving.

It's the difference between seeing a Porsche in the salesroom and taking it for an H-3 test drive when the van cams are on suspension.

In the hour-long after-lunch classroom session I attended in a windowless air-conditioned room, there wasn't much of the driving excitement you see in those television advertisements. Instead, there were a couple of PowerPoint presentations that seemed to keep everyone on the brink of a nap.

Still, the presentations addressed the kinds of things someone is going to ask a salesman. What's the base price of the CE with a manual transmission? ($13,370.) Isn't the Corolla's 4-crossbar grille a little larger than last year's? (Yes, it is.) What's the mileage on the Aerio SX? (26 city, 33 highway).

That's the obvious stuff. This class is for professionals, though; they offer up way more information than your average car buyer really needs to know — but someone is going to ask sooner or later:

Toyota's tilt-and-slide sunroof costs an extra $750. The CE has four cup holders (two front and back). The top-of-the-line S model comes with color-keyed outside power mirrors and color-keyed front, side and rear underspoilers that you can't get on the CE and LE model. The Aerio's name combines "aerial" (airy, light and graceful) and "rio" (smooth-flowing, like a river).

My favorite, I-never-would-have-guessed secret was that the Aerio (which is being marketed to young men looking for something sporty and futuristic, but roomy enough for a family, too) includes a small plastic bucket tucked under its rear storage area. It's perfect, the sales force was told, for holding a bunch of auto tools or paired with a plastic shovel for the kids at the beach.

None of that really excited any of those sitting through the presentation.

New car salesmen, it turns out, are just like new car buyers; mostly they are just interested in finding out how the cars drive. When the lights came up and the doors opened, there was a dash for the parking lot, where the new cars were lined up waiting to be put through their paces on the roads of Mapunapuna, including a quarter-mile stretch of H-1 Freeway.

Gear ratios, hip point heights, tire pressure recommendations — all of that became mostly irrelevant as the sales warriors met the road.

"In the end, people are looking for a car that gives them the best fit," said

Dennis Oseto, a Servco salesman from Maui who took me out for a spin in the Aerio SX. "The trick is to help them find that fit."

And you don't need a sales class to tell you that's true.