Encore: Work that matters in the second half of life.

Robert Chambers. Photo by Steve Tripoli/Marketplace.

Robert Chambers has raised approximately $2 million to expand Bonnie CLAC, which finances new car purchases for low-income families, since he was named a Purpose Prize winner in 2006.

Chambers was profiled on Marketplace, the NPR business program, which captured well the “encore moment” when Chambers knew he had to do something different.

Here’s how correspondent Steve Tripoli begins the piece:

TRIPOLI: Robert Chambers’ post-retirement career was born at a New Hampshire car dealership a while back. He was working there one morning when the sales force was called together. A $1,000 bonus was offered to anyone who could sell an older car with 70,000 miles on it. Shortly after that a young woman walked in, a single mother earning $11 an hour. The salesman steered her to the “bonus car.” She bit on a high price, but then was told there’d be a problem getting financing. Chambers picks up the story.

CHAMBERS: She had gone through a divorce and had ended up with some credit issues. So she was financed at a very high interest rate, and she was sold a very expensive warranty on the car. And when she drove off this car was financed over a five year period of time, which is typical, but I knew that that car would be dead in three years or would have significant mechanical problems. And when the business manager walked out of the office he and the salesperson high-fived each other, because the dealership had made $5,000 profit off of this woman. And I just couldn’t stand it anymore.

TRIPOLI: Chambers says unsophisticated working people get shafted on used cars all the time. What irks him even more is that they can often get new cars for the same overall cost, but no one tells them that’s possible. So Chambers chose not to retire after leaving car sales, even though he was well set from owning several businesses. Instead he channeled his frustrations into cooking up a new business called Bonnie CLAC. CLAC stands for “Car Loans and Counseling.” It gives lower-income people two things they rarely get on big purchases: the bargaining clout of a group, plus a heavy dose of guidance.

Hear the full piece here.