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I, too, am a Monmouth County resident and was aggravated by the closing of Shrewsbury Motors last year, but only from the service point of view. I'm not surprised about Paul Miller closing. Actually a salesman at Sports & Specialists in Princeton told us this was happening two weeks ago when we leased an '07 convertible. My family of three has leased 6 Saabs in the last 6-1/2 years (long story). My wife and I have tried four times to buy a car from Paul Miller, the first time about a week after they opened in 2004 and the last two and a half weeks ago. I have always found their sales staff to be cocky, indifferent and typically sleazy to the point where we would simply be turned off. On other hand, we have had two of our cars serviced there this year. The service department was courteous, efficient and fast (one of the techs came from Shrewsbury Motors). No complaints there.
Aside from a lackluster sales staff (which may reflect the attitude of the whole Paul Miller chain - I don't know), I think the physical location was actually bad. Route 1 is not a road conducive to car browsing. It's noisy, fast and full of trucks. You have to be paying attention to the road, not the sights. In addition, if you were approaching from the south, it was easy to miss the entrance to the dealership, and if you approached from the north, you had to go way down the road and jughandle back (Jerseyites will know what I'm talking about).
Shrewsbury Motors closed over a year ago. For that period of time, at least, Paul Miller was the only Saab dealer for Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean Counties which is an absolutely huge customer base. The fact that they couldn't or didn't make a go of it is probably more reflective of the management's attitude and disinterest in the Saab brand (they also sell Rolls Royce, Bentley(?), BMW, Audi and Land Rover if I'm not mistaken) than of problem caused by Saab, itself.
Hopefully, Saab will find us someone in this vast territory who will open a new dealership. In meantime, my family will continue to lease our Saabs from either Sports & Specialist or International Motors in Falls Church, Virginia (great dealership for sales, by the way) and make the trek to Princeton for service if necessary (fortunately Saab reliability has improved to the point where service has rarely been required by us).
posted by 205.188.11...
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