Becki the Car Hunter

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Michael Darter

Becki Chernoff ’00 uses her mechanical engineering degree to hunt for cars.

For the past four years, Becki Chernoff ’00 (mechanical engineering) has specialized in finding vintage Mercedes-Benzes for Mercedes Motoring in Glendale, Calif. In January, she also started her own company under the name Becki the Car Hunter out of her home in Los Angeles. She counsels prospective car buyers on what kind of car is right for them, hunts for the car, schedules an inspection, negotiates the price and arranges for shipping if needed. The Skaneateles, N.Y., native also sells cars for clients, which includes preparing the car for sale, listing it on various websites and talking with buyers. Here are her thoughts on how she landed in this niche business.

I started with engineering because I was good at math and science and my dad is an engineer as well. Around my senior year, someone who was going to RIT with me had a good friend who worked at Cadillac, and I talked to him on the phone and I went to visit Detroit and he showed me around the area. I wanted to work in the auto industry. I always liked cars growing up because my dad would take me to car shows.

There were definitely classes where I was one of two girls in the class. There weren’t many at all. It didn’t ever bother me that there were only a couple of girls. I was comfortable in that environment.

(After graduating), I moved to Detroit and started working at a window regulator supplier in the auto industry. Then I started working for a software company. Their software was used at all different automotive plants, and I got stationed at Ford Motor Co. for about nine years. I was the help desk for the software.

After working at Ford for many years, I was eventually laid off, which was fine because I was ready to leave Detroit at that time.

I had been working for a friend finding Mercedes at a business called Mercedes Motoring in Glendale, Calif. I had been doing it long distance and I decided to move out here to Los Angeles to work in person full time.

Here I find vintage Mercedes-Benzes, mostly diesels from the ’70s and ’80s. I scour the country for the best of the best. I have learned a lot from my boss, JG Francis, about what to look for and how to find cars, the questions to ask. It has proven to be a useful skill out in the world because not everybody knows how to do that.

There are a lot of used Mercedes out there but they aren’t well preserved. They aren’t impossible to find but it takes a lot of searching to find the really, really nice ones.

I wanted to branch out on my own. I’m 36; it is time for me to do my own thing aside from just looking for classic Mercedes. I had already helped friends find cars for years. I would look online for them, go with them to see cars, help them get a good deal. It comes second nature to me and I have learned even more about the trade searching for Mercedes, so I figured why not try to do my own thing and help people find any kind of car.

They will ask me for a specific car or they will say, ‘I need a new car and I need it to do this, this and this. I need to be able to go camping. I need something really reliable. I need a second car that is showpiece.’ There are all different criteria and I will talk them through it and help them figure out what they might want or what I can see them in—kind of like a car therapist.

The thing that boggles my mind is that people buy homes and there are real estate agents to help them with the biggest purchase of their life. The second biggest purchase for people is usually a car and there is no one to help the middle-of-the-roaders.

I am a car hunter. Basically mechanical engineering is advanced problem-solving, and I feel like I have applied that and then some to my life. I am constantly trying to solve problems and find solutions to everything. I always enjoy learning new things and working with people and helping them.

It’s a weird niche job for sure. It’s totally random. I just love cars so much that it’s like I kept doing what I was interested in until it turned into this bizarre career that I love.

I feel really fortunate that the thing I am most interested in is able to bring an income.

Work Experience

• Mercedes hunter for Mercedes Motoring and self-employed car hunter
• Applications engineer for QMC
• CAD design engineer for Hi-Lex, window regulator company

Advice

• “You can get a better deal from a private owner than you usually can from a dealership, but you have to ask the right questions when you are buying from a private party.”
• “The fewer owners a car has had, the better.”
• “Always get a Carfax (vehicle history report) on the car if the car is new enough to have one.”
• “Always get a car inspected by an independent mechanic before you buy it.”