SO WHAT DOES "GROK" MEAN?

The meaning of the word Grok comes from the 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.  The novel not only won a Hugo Award, but it has been a sci-fi classic for decades.

While it is a love story, the main character in the novel is the last Martian now living here on Earth.  Grok is a Martian word, but due to the novel's popularity you will now find it in the English dictionary.  Here is a brief recap of the background to the story and how Grok fits within it: Mars was as it is today, a dry, dead planet, but it had not always been so.  In the story, Martians were a highly evolved species and because water had become so scarce on their planet, Martians evolutionary development now revolved around drinking.  Not drinking as in alcohol, but their need to drink changed how they did everything.  If a Martian wanted to learn something he or she would drink it and this was known as Grokking.  Once a Martian had Grokked something, it was no longer just something they knew, it literally became something that they were and they knew everything there was to know about it.

Now here is how Grokking applies to car shopping; cars are highly engineered, complex, mechanical devices.  The model and option combinations tend to be very complicated.  "Build A Car" functions are nice, but are mostly incapable of guiding you through differences across the various sub-model choices (known as trims or derivatives).

"We have built the Auto-Grok so you can shop effectively using a deep understanding of cars."

Naturally, we hope that you use your Auto-Grok knowledge to shop via our network of dealers using our shopping cart service which empowers you to shop for and even buy your next car entirely online.

Finally, a quick word of warning too.  Some Auto-Grok customers have told us that after Grokking, they tried to speak to dealers who don't have a shopping cart, and that they regret doing so.  We know it is tempting to take free knowledge and try to use it elsewhere.  However as we have had direct, negative customer feedback from some who have done that we thought it appropriate to share their experience.

Apparently once you are able to say with confidence that you don't need to come in to <a non-enlightened> dealership for a vehicle consultation or to get a price, we have been told that some car dealers without a shopping cart get quite annoyed and make Auto-Grok customers uncomfortable. 

We believe that there are good reasons to need to and want to speak to a car dealer and even to go and see an enlightened one who has demonstrated that you can trust them (i.e. to firm up their quoted value for your trade-in and verify its condition, to verify your credit rating with their lenders, to verify your identity, and to hold your selected vehicle from sale to others, etc.).  However, we believe that you should only do this when you are ready to and that you shouldn't be forced to prior to you achieving that level of comfort. 

Our warning is this:  many other Auto-Grok customers tell us that shopping and even buying entirely online beats talking to a car dealer salesperson for whatever small price difference they are able to negotiate outside of the shopping cart, in exchange for the countless, stressful, additional hours, days and weeks of frustration they encountered when they went offline.

Good shopping!

Get Grokking:  Return to The Auto-Grok