Bob Swann

From DevilshireWiki

Bob Swann
Neil Patrick Harris as Bob Swann
First appearance - Last appearance -
Statistics Name Robert 'Bob' Swan Status Alive Birthday - Age 36 Species Human Affiliation The Swann Family The Swann Autoplex Jamabalaya Blues Hall Powers Better Than You Themesong This Is The Life - Alfred M. Yankovic Top That! Quote - Portrayed by  Neil Patrick Harris App Status PC

Bob Swann is a Swann-family black sheep and the owner of the Swann Autoplex out on the Rt 1 Miracle Mile.

History

Sometimes it seems like there's just too damn many Swanns to keep track of, doesn't it? I say that and I am one. I certainly wouldn't want to have to task myself with sitting down and keeping track of them all. I mean, logistically it would be a nightmare, but frankly that would just involve talking to too many of them. I'm not well-liked by the majority of my cousins, second cousins, whatever. Which is okay, I can do without their brand of crazy.

Me, I'm Bob, Bob Swann. But c'mon, you know that. You must have seen the commercials. C'mon down to the Swann Autoplex on the route 1A Miracle Mile where you can drive away in a new Toyota, Honda or Volkswagen and I can promise you'll get a demon of a deal! Whoosh. The family does not like that at all. The name Swann, it means hard working, blue collar, piety. What the hell do they think I am? I'm as hard working as any other Swann. You don't wear the suits I wear and drive the cars I drive by being lazy in my line of work. The Swann Autoplex is the biggest in Massachusetts. Give me ten more years and it'll be the biggest in New England. That's the Swann work ethic for you, and I get nothing but shit for it.

Lemme bring it back in, though. I'm Bob Swann. My big brother, everyone likes him. Michael Swann is a hard working, blue collar family man. Very blue. He went into the law enforcement business. Me, I kind of went the opposite way. Our dad, he used to insist on calling himself Robert Swann Sr. That's before I ditched Robbie and Robert for Bob. People like a guy named Bob, you know. It says 'trustworthy American'. Robert Swann Jr says 'I drink a lot and my dad has no creativity'. So I became Bob Swann and he dropped the Sr. I can deal with that. Now dad, he's Cyrus Swann Sr's youngest brother. Like, really young. Cyrus went off to fight the Nazis in World War II and dad stayed home because he hadn't been born yet. When Cyrus came home, it was to a kid brother twenty years his junior. Could explain why I feel I've got so little in common with my cousins. Most of them could be my dad.

So for most of my childhood I'm an okay kid. Sure, Michael was into sports whereas I was into reading, but that wasn't so bad. My family wasn't the sort of family that didn't respect a scholar. 'Cept as it turned out, I wasn't all that interested in being a scholar, either. In the Swann family if you bother going to college, it seems to be so you can be a doctor and come back and patch up the lunatics in my family who decide to do things a little more heroic. Me, when I turned sixteen I got a job at the old Farley Motors car dealership just south of the city on route 1. I was a quick learner and within a year was one of his top lot men. When I turned eighteen I applied to Harvard Business School. My dad wasn't keen on giving me a recommendation, so Jack Farley gave it instead.

When I got in, it was Jack who gave me a gift to congratulate me, not my dad. Michael was the hero of the family, joining the police academy two years earlier and joining the Devilshire force soon thereafter. My desire to go to business school, and the fact that I kept working at the car lot, that didn't really thrill my dad. But Jack, he wanted me as a manager, so he gave me my first car and I went between Cambridge and Devilshire five times a week. I couldn't live on campus, so I ended up getting a little apartment in Peabody so it would be right between work and school. When I graduated Michael showed up, so'd Jack. Dad was nowhere to be seen. I think Michael wasn't really even supposed to be there, but I appreciated it. I really did. Even through all the arguments that would come, I've loved my brother since then.

Do you like Phil Collins? Wait, what?

Once I graduated I began to work on my MBA. Jack began showing less and less at the lot and I took over more and more responsibilities. That was fine, it was the work I wanted to do and my MBA required a lot less presence on campus than did my degree. The day I earned my masters was the day that Jack Farley said he was stepping back and handing over the reigns of the business to me. He also made me a deal. I had two years to buy him out and he'd sell to me at 85 of market value. Otherwise, he told me, he'd have to sell the business when he went into retirement and who knows what I'd end up with.

It was a lot of money Jack was asking for. Even at the discount, I wasn't sure how I could possibly hope to raise it. He paid me well and, hell, I was bringing in good business with the changes that I was making. Unfortunately, the remainder would have to be covered in a loan, and with my student loans already piled up on me and little collateral to my name, the banks wouldn't help me out. This was the end of the 80s and the Clinton boom wouldn't give the economy the upswing it needed for banks to have a lot of faith in small businesses for a few years yet, you see. So small businesses, we had to turn elsewhere.

Which is what brought me to Jackie Salemme, a crew boss in the Patriarca crime family of Providence, Rhode Island. They were looking for Boston-area interests, which were pretty lean since the boys on Winter Hill ran most of the city. With permission from his boss, Nicky Bianco, Jackie set me up with the money I needed. I knew that one day he'd come a-calling, but I honestly believed I could put together the money necessary to pay him back. The lot was paying off, but I just needed the capital to start with. And I got it.

Within two years Swann Automotive became Swann Honda, to differentiate it from Swann Used. I kicked off '92 by buying out DeLucca's lot across the street and turning it into Swann Toyota. By this point the money was rolling in. I bought a house in Devilshire and invited local area businessmen to my housewarming. No Swanns were on that list. None but my brother. I don't blame him for not showing. By '95 I'd changed Swann Used to Bob's Pre-Owned and picked up Devilshire Volkswagen to add to my growing collection. The stretch of route 1 between mile marker 114 and 115 became known to Bostonians as the home of the Swann Autoplex and the Miracle Mile. Life was good. Life was really good right then.

Then the Patriarcas showed up in my life. I was ready. I'd had the money set aside for them for a long time. 'Cept it wasn't money they wanted. My good, honest business, it was a great front for them. They wanted to use me, use the autoplex, as a front to launder the money they got from organized crime up and down the New England coast. I barely ate for a week, but there was no way out of it. Eventually I let Jackie in as an under the counter business partner and together we started cooking my books.

That first year I must have lost twenty pounds. But there was a point in there where I realized I wasn't scared anymore. That I realized I was kind of enjoying it. The Swanns, they're such an upright people, and I'd been the black sheep since I turned eighteen. Now I was the ultimate black sheep. My brother was a cop and I was a criminal. After another year Jackie got a bump to acting boss when Nicky went to jail. Instead of sending in someone to replace him, Jackie decided that I was a friend to the Patriarca family and he made me an associate. I won't lie, I still have a swagger in my step. I know what it means, I know how much danger I'm in, I know how much trouble I could be in, but damn if being a mobster isn't a little cool. And, hey, I'm in a low key part of the business. I'm no soldier. I make money clean. Hell, I make it shine.

Chris Harget ain't got nothin' on me!

The extra money that was coming in allowed me to expand again, opening up a lot for Chrysler-Plymouth, then Chrysler-Dodge, then Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep. Frankly, dealing with Chrysler got a little old, so some time later I'd just turn it into another Toyota lot under the Scion name. Dealing with the Japanese is always easy. That wasn't my worst mistep by far, though. The dot com boom was not nice to me at all. I don't know what half the business I invested in were meant to do, but everything suggested that the internet was the way to go. Look, I know cars, I know business and these days I even know computers. At the time, though? Hell, everyone had their heads in the sky. Pets dot com. Books dot com. Hey, I thought webquilts dot com would catch on. I figured housewives everywhere would want to log onto the world wide quilt and interface with other quilters using q-mail. This did not occur.

Fortunately, it only takes one thing being golden to save a man's ass. That Google thing turned out to be pretty good and though just about everything else I invested in went south, it more than made up for everything else. With my Google money I was able to move into a new house and buy up another lot. This time for Swann Luxe, the best place on the north shore for luxury automotives. Some of my best customers were my fellow associates. At the same time, I changed Bob's Pre-Owned to Bob's New To You and doubled the size of the lot. Life was sweet.

The next major setback would come when I tried to open my first lot in Boston proper. A Nissan lot on Comm Ave in Allston was failing and I swept in and tried to buy them out. That's when some loudmouth reporter for the Boston Globe started looking a little too close into my business. This Mandi Moore (awful name) decided that she didn't want to see a little guy get bought out by the big bad Swann. The heat she put on me was enough to get my associates to ask me to back off. The deal went sour enough that when I tried to open my own Nissan lot a few years back, I wasn't able to. I hate that woman.

Really, that brings us up to today. I'm filthy fucking rich, living the good life, I've got friends in all the right places and a few of them in the wrong ones. I like blues music, which is why I've got a small bluesy bar in north Devilshire. I like fast cars, which is why I'm a part owner in a race track near Manchester and sponsor a car in the stock car races that go down there. I like to shoot and I play some racquetball. I'm known along the east half of the state, cos I insist on doing my own commercials. I run one of the biggest autoplexes in New England, but I still hit the lot now and again to put a key in someone's hand. I like to sell and I love to make money. I don't get along really well with my family, but I love my broter like I love no other, and I'm loyal to him 'til the end. Hell, I haven't talked to my dad for years, but I'd still answer the call. I think most of my family is nuts and they think I'm a coward and a rich fool and they may be right, but damn it, I'm a Swann. At the end of the day, I'll always be a Swann, and I'll be there when the call goes out.

I'm Bob Swann, and I'd like to put you in a new car.

Personality

Bob is a grade-A D-bag!

Cars and Abilities

Bob is rich and into cars. While Monday through Thursday he drives a few lot cars as advertisements (always a Tundra on Thursday) on Friday and the weekend he dusts off his personal rides and takes them for a spin.

Friday's Exige gets looks. Mostly cos it's orange and looks like something from Dr Seuss.

Bob's new baby, his Saturday car.

Sunday's car is class that can do 200.

People

Family

The Swann Family - For the most part Bob is pretty thoroughly cut off from his family. He doesn't talk to his father, most of his cousins are way older than him anyway and think he's a dipshit and they've raised their kids to agree! To establish familial specifics, Cyrus Swann Sr. was his oldest uncle, while Cyrus Swann Jr. and Phillip Swann are his cousins. Katie Swann is his niece and Elijah, Lucy, Charity and Hope are all first cousins once removed. Perhaps a chart shall be added!

Acquaintances

Angela Bradford - A rising star! Perhaps.

Chris Harget - Fellow entrepreneur, good friend. Eventually we'll RP and establish some kind of history!

Marley Moore - Weird girl. Is apparently pining over one of his cousins. Either Elijah or Charlie. She couldn't seem to figure it out.

Loyal Customers

Tristan Harget - Sold him a car! Corvette!

Wentworth Moore - Sold him his first car! Buick Roadmaster!

Judith Devlin - Sold her a car! Jaguar!

Alyson Edwards - Used Civic hatchback. Good mileage, ugly as hell.

Shari Taniguchi - Used Honda Fit. Pink. With hearts.

Awful People

Mandi Jenkins-Moore - ...is a gigantic pain in the ass. 'Nuff said!

Maggie MacBeth - She's a dirty bird.

Anyone Else - Bob's been selling cars in Devilshire for the better part of 20 years. It's entirely possible that if you're a Devilshire native, he helped put you in your first auto. Feel free to page if you think that might be so! Also, he attended Harvard for six years, so maybe he knows people from there! Is a Devilshire native and active in the community! Lived here all his life! Whatever!

Recent Unfoldings

I'll just let this speak for itself.

Trivia

Neil Patrick Harris was never intended to join the cast of Devilshire. He did not audition. He was never cast. He is unpaid. He simply won't leave. One day the producers arrived on set to find Mister Harris intoxicated, having apparently taken a potentially lethal combination of Vicks Vapo-Rub and dessicated owl dust. When he was asked to leave he grew increasingly agitated until he finally lashed out, severely injuring two guards and maiming assistant producer Bud Thomas by removing his eye with what Mister Harris refers to as 'my opium spoon'. Since then no one has made any attempt to force Mister Harris to leave and he has demonstrated no desire to go. As such, he was written into the show, being given a role that fit his limited capacity for social interaction.