Why is buying a car so hard/insulting?

[bdex75]

I worked for a great family owned franchise car dealer for several years a long time ago. In all aspects of the business other than wrenching. Ran the body shop to learn claims, ran service to learn relationship with AD. Sold and was a finance guy.

I think that in today's age of "I want it as cheap and fast as I can and don't care about service" car dealers will have increased headwinds.

I agree. One could "build" or order a car on line, wire money from their bank to the manufacturer to pay and have shipped. Would cut out all of the middleman associated costs. But what about service? What about when they break? Who will fix them? And that is assuming that they were shipped clean, prepped and full of fuel. Ready to be dropped at your door. And do you want to test drive the car? How can you do that with no physical dealership to go to? Not saying that it has to be owned by a third party, but people want to feel and touch and drive a car before the plop down thousands of dollars on one. Kind of similar to the Rolex AD bs the gray. A lot of us go to AD to try on and decide then some buy from gray to save a a buck. (Sometimes a lot of bucks). If everyone did that how long will they be around for us to try them on? And Rolex is not going to build boutiques that they own everywhere world wide. They do t even own the ones they have now if I remember correctly.

I think dealers that charge a $1000 dealer fee are asking to run people off. But there are several around me that advertise no dealer fees. But in the end it is still the final price that matters.

Tesla is pushing the envelope against franchised dealers. Elon has enough money and determination to make it happen. Will be interesting to see if others follow suit. The expense of building your own network of dealerships is insane and why I personally believe direct sales has not yet happened with big 3.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk