Nick Saban, Mercedes, and car stories from the road

I saw a story out of Birmingham where Alabama head coach Nick Saban has agreed to be a partner in a Birmingham-area Mercedes dealership.

The article repeated the oft-told Saban story of how he wanted to own a car dealership when he first graduated from Kent State, that he was set to go to some kind of General Motors management school to prepare him to be a dealer General Manager, but because his now-wife Terry had one more year of school left, he stuck around as a graduate assistant on then-Kent State coach Don James' football staff and the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

The relationship between athletic departments and car dealerships is legendary. Almost every college athletic department of note has an agreement with a local dealer - or often several, in the case of big-time D-1 schools - to provide athletic personnel with free cars in exchange for benefits that range from tickets to games, access to staff and players, promotions, etc. As more than one coach has said, it's like every car dealer wants to be a coach; and every coach wants a new car.

I'm reminded of a former Alabama coach who was notorious for being hard on his dealer-provided cars, demanding frequent changes and often at strange times. One of the strangest, however, was a matter of convenience for the coach and inconvenience for the dealership. This coach was driving up I-59/20 from Tuscaloosa on his way to Birmingham when his car broke down; I don't know if the engine actually stopped running or he had a flat tire or simply ran out of gas. But this coach was notoriously impatient (as most coaches are), and he was in a hurry, so he called the dealership and said, "I want a new car." Of course they said OK, and when would he like it? "Right now,'' the coach said. "Get someone to bring it to me." Of course, they said; are you at the athletic complex, or at your home? "Have your guy meet me on I-59 at" whatever exit or milemarker he was at. This wasn't normal, but then very few of the demands of high-powered football coaches are normal, so the dealer sent a guy out in a new car to meet the coach. Of course, when he got there, this coach took the new car, threw the guy the keys to the car that wasn't running, said "Thanks,'' and drove off.

NASCAR drivers have some of the funniest stories on rental cars. Back in the day when the drivers would fly commercial to the next race, they'd rent cars from the airport (this was before so many of them had their own private planes). On this day, a pretty famous driver, a crew member, and a couple media guys were all riding together back to the airport to catch a flight out of town, and they were running very late, to the point that they were close to missing their flight. "No problem,'' said the NASCAR driver. "I've got the collision/damage waiver." He drove to the front of the terminal at the ticketing level, got out and popped the hood of the car, pulled a wire, and then called the rental car company. "Hey, your car broke down and I need someone to pick it up,'' he said. The rental car company said, "Sure. Where is the car located?" He told them, "It's in front of the terminal,'' and he hung up and, needless to say, everyone made their flight.

It was a trip to Puerto Rico to cover the San Juan Shoot-Out basketball tournament where I learned what became a truism I've used over the years. The roads in Puerto Rico where terrible (and might still be, I just haven't been back in a long time), plus the traffic patterns seem more like figure-eight demolition derby than the, by comparison, organized traffic patterns most of us in the U.S. are accustomed to. The rental company told us we needed to get the collision damage waiver, which we did. A bunch of us were riding together, trying to find the practice facility of one of the teams we were covering, which was out in some fringe area. The guy driving missed a turn, and when we realized it he simply did a U-turn across a median, curbs, trash, over pot-holes - and we came up with the saying, "the only true all-terrain vehicle is a rental car with a collision damage waiver."

Words to live - and travel - by.

Saban apparently is a fan of Mercedes. His partner in the deal is an old friend of his from Louisiana, a Mercedes dealer from that state who was looking to expand into Alabama in partnership with Saban. The partner said that Saban has long been a Mercedes enthusiast and years ago expressed an interest in opening a dealership; that Saban told him, "I don't have a minute to run it, but I love the brand."

I can see why. Years ago, when I was at my first newspaper, I received an invitation to go to a SAAB ride-and-drive at Road Atlanta, a road course race track in our newspaper coverage area. SAAB brought in SAAB dealers from all over Georgia to test drive the new SAAB, compare it to other cars, and meet the company president who would be addressing the crowd to spur enthusiasm for the new line of automobiles. I was the only media guy there, and I'm sure they hoped I'd write a glowing report on the wonderful qualities of the SAAB.

Unfortunately, they made the mistake of putting a Mercedes convertable, a 560 Class or maybe 280, in as one of the test cars we could drive around the track. I say unfortunately because everyone wanted to drive the Mercedes, myself included. The line for driving the Mercedes around the Road Atlanta track was longer than any other car. SAAB dealers were jumping line when they could to get in the Mercedes and see what it would do on the track.

Eventually, the Mercedes just disappeared. The SAAB factory reps realized they were losing that battle, and took it out of driving rotation, forcing us to drive the SAAB and Volvo and Cadillac or whatever other brands they'd put up to compare to their new car.

I know I was supposed to write about SAAB, and how good of a car it was (and it was, it really was). But it was the first time I'd ever driven a Mercedes, and it was everything I thought it would be. How do you not fall in love driving a convertible Mercedes, top-down, around the picturesque Road Atlanta course, seeing how smooth it rides, how well it handles, how much just pure pleasure a driving experience could be?

So I wrote instead of starting my love-affair with this foreign-born beauty who, alas, was so far out of my economic class that I feared I would never be able to afford her.

Needless to say, I was never invited back to a SAAB ride-n-drive.

But I did eventually get a Mercedes.