The Hispanic car salesman must also be savvy to differences. Hispanics are much more likely to take the advice of friends and relatives about what to buy and who to buy it from. They seek a guide in a land of dizzying choices and information overload.

If a car has a problem, a non-Hispanic buyer will report to the service department. Not Hispanics.

"They come and see the salesperson, even if the service person speaks Spanish," says Gus Casabe, used-car manager at Alexandria Toyota, one of a handful of Hispanic salesmen in the area as long-established as Vidal. "It's some kind of different relationship between the salesperson and the customer than American people have. . . . Once you get into a relationship with a Spanish customer, unless you do something crazy, it's almost forever."

Vidal says this customer loyalty is simply a cultural instinct of Latinos -- a triumph of the relational over the transactional. "That's what we are," is how Vidal explains it. "It's our culture back home." . . .

Over the years, the car biz has sometimes kept Vidal away from his family. He turned down chances to be promoted to manager, he says, because a salesman can control his hours, and Vidal can take time off for spontaneous family events. He is private about his earnings, but a salesman at his level can make $150,000 to $250,000 a year in commissions, more than a salaried manager.

He works so hard, he says, to keep his daughters, Alicia, 14, and Nicole, 12, in private Catholic school and give them the very best university education. That way, they may ascend into those mythic professional classes -- the realm of people who write checks for the entire cost of an Odyssey, or who brought Mercedes to his father's garage.

Whatever his girls do, he "will be very proud," he says. "That's the only thing I want." . . .