"You see, they put that TruCoat on in the factory. There's nothing I can do...
Posted on 07/18/2022 4:17:10 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Turns out buying a car in the U.S. is wildly different from buying one in the UK—and not in a good way.
I've been working at The Drive for more than a year now and there are a lot of things I've discovered I don't know about the United States. Like, what is Fahrenheit and how you spell words like "color." But one of the biggest ones is that I've had to try and find out how U.S. car dealerships work. Right around the formation of Stellantis, I got the idea this might be something I didn't totally understand. After 18 months of research, however, I'm pleased to announce this is how I think y'all buy cars.
Here in (sort of) Europe, we don't have dealerships. Or, well, we have what I interpret as dealerships but which I've come to discover is nothing at all like the U.S. model of a dealership. Let's say that you specifically want to buy a Nissan here in England; then you just look up a Nissan dealer and go there to check out its Nissans. The salespeople will probably try and upsell you from the Nissan you want to a nicer Nissan, but there might be some specific incentives from the automaker to get that one specifically. Other non-Nissan-specialist car places (car lots) might not have said incentives. Or really, you can just go online and buy one, but most new cars here are bought directly from the manufacturer at our version of dealerships because that, uh, makes the most sense.
Let's recap how it works in the UK: People say they want a car, the manufacturer makes and delivers the car (pending any delays for chip shortages, etc.)—that's it. I was surprised to discover this is not how people buy cars in the U.S.
Car Manufacturers Cannot Sell You a Vehicle
This might seem obvious to anyone in America, but for me, it was a genuine surprise to find out you cannot buy cars from car manufacturers. This was probably where I first realized I was way out of my depth, as the idea that gigantic, multinational, multi-billion-dollar companies are beholden to a bunch of dealerships still has me pretty baffled.
Dealers Can Charge You Whatever They Want
In these car-starved times, I hear prices at dealerships in the U.S. are up, which again makes no sense to me because surely a dealership shouldn't be allowed to just put whatever price it wants on a car that a manufacturer delivered to them to sell to you. This, I've come to understand, is naive. In fact, it's basically enshrined in law that dealers can triple the price of whatever Jeep you want to buy and you can go suck it if you don't want to pay that.
You Have to Go to a Dealership to Buy a Car
This is wild to me, and although things are changing in the U.S. after the pandemic with at-home deliveries and all, folks for the most part still have to go to a dealership to buy a car. This reminds me, why in the world would I still need to go to a place and speak to a guy to get a car in the year 2022? I don't want to do that—that's massively inconvenient. If I wanted the hassle of trying to deal with some weirdo trying to mug me off and forcing me to meet them then I'd be searching for Suzuki Jimnys on Facebook Marketplace.
You May Not Get the Car You Really Want
Okay, this is where it gets even wilder to me. So you have to go to a dealership and talk to a guy who's likely trying to rip you off with a markup nowadays, and then he tells you what car he's going to sell you. You get to choose from whatever inventory they have at that location, and if it's not the spec you really want, you're stuck. I guess you could maybe go to another place and speak to another guy to find out what they got, but otherwise, you just have to take whatever's in. This is not how we do things here in the UK, where if you buy a new car you can choose what car you get. Crazy, I know.
Dealers Have Infinite Power Over You and Car Manufacturers
So you've gone to a dealer and essentially been forced to become besties with the guy who sold you a car that you may or may not have wanted, but at least you've got a car now. Now the whole process is wildly different than it is here in the UK, but perhaps the biggest difference is just how much power dealers and the National Dealers Association (NADA) have over consumers and automakers alike. As far as I can gather, dealers choose which car you buy and who you buy it from, and even how much you'll buy it for. It sounds like there's some kind of legal deal that stops anyone from speaking directly to a manufacturer—oh wait, there is! Dealers appear to rule the whole automotive industry and if anyone questions it then you can't have a car, buddy.
If you ever wondered how a British person sees car buying in the U.S., well, now you know.
Person sounds like a good oid. Robot to accept anything.
Incredibly naive and uneducated as well.
Buy it from the manufacturer? Nissan? Send it back to the factory when it needs something? How does that work?
What a pant load, but bloggers gotta blog.
"You think you hate it now, wait 'til you drive it."
In fact the person makes any number of mistakes and either flat out lies or is, to put it politely, completely misinformed about any number of things.
I’ve been aided every time I’ve bought a car by Remar Sutton’s advice:
http://dontgettakeneverytime.com/
It’s been a long time since I was in Europe but I had noticed in France they had showrooms and no car lots. I could not figure that out at the time.
Her article explains a great deal to me.
My last 3 cars have been bought online with the requirements I wanted. I still had to go to the dealer to pick it up.
It would be a nice option if the Manufactures left Americans buy direct but that is an unheard of in this Country.
She also doesn't mention that vehicles in the U.K. cost about twice as much as a comparable vehicle in the U.S. Sure, you can get a tiny econonobox for fairly cheap, but it's something most Americans wouldn't be willing to drive. To buy and operate a car that most Americans would find acceptable (decent power, air conditioning, automatic transmission) you'd pay a lot more in the U.K.
I wanted to buy a certain color. The dealership didn’t have it, so they called other dealerships. They found one 25 miles away. They sent a person to go pick it up, and I got the color I wanted
A big aspect of *most* automobile sales (both at dealerships and ‘privately’) is freely, albeit deceptively, giving up your new or used automobile ownership to the state. And, paying for the privilege of doing so. What you are doing (and I’ve done in all my automobile purchases too) is converting a perfectly good automobile into a motor vehicle.
You are at the dealership salesperson’s desk, you fork over the money, he takes it, and now you own an automobile. Then, he says, “and for an additional $300, I can get you plates so that you can drive it off our lot”. You then fork over another $300, and what he does is send the MCO/MSO paperwork, the allodial title of the automobile, to your state RMV, they create and give you back a ‘Certificate of Title’ which is a mere Color of Title and plates, and they retain the allodial MCO/MSO title.
A ‘Certificate of Title’ is NOT pure ownership. It entitles you to transfer ‘color of title’ to a new owner, pay auto excise taxes on it every year, and drive your motor vehicle.
Only with an Allodial Title, can you be the COMPLETE Sovereign owner of an automobile, pay no taxes on it, no excise taxes, and freely *TRAVEL* with it.
I ordered my last car to spec from Audi via the local dealership. It was reasonably painless. It took about 4 months to show up. Probably longer today.
5-6 years ago we did a Rhine river cruise, and one of the excursions I did was of the Mercedes GLA plant at Rastatt. It was quite an impressive facility, and besides the museum and plant tour we did, there was a large facilty where tons of Europeans were taking delivery of their new cars right at the factory.
Yup
You pick the car you want, with the accessories you want, and negotiate a price.
Lots of competition, most of the time. The last year has been weird because of chip shortages.
No prices fixed by the government.
You get to choose the dealer you wish to deal with.
Tesla has no dealers, and sells direct from the manufacturer.
The dealership model in the US is a financing vehicle for the auto manufacturers. The dealership will have a continuous loan of several million dollars and the manufacturer sends the dealer the cars the manufacturer makes, without regard with what that dealer can sell. So, a dealer in Miami who could sell Corvettes all day long may get one along with a defecation-load of unsalable lesser cars. The dealer then has to trade with other dealers to get the corvettes that went to a ten-car dealership in East Podunk and give them a heck of a deal on the eBolts and iJinks that will most likely sell in East Podunk. There are scads of laws intended to protect the system as it exists and companies that want to use a different model, like Tesla can’t actually sell you a car in lots of places.
The writer obviously doesn’t know how to negotate.
Go in on the last sales day of the month. If they’ve met their quota for the month, and aren’t near another incentive point, it’s time to get busy. If they have, wait a month or shop around.
Go in about 45 minutes before closing. It’s important that you don’d start negotiating until 15 minutes before closing. Make them think they have YOU on the hook. (Helps to have a spouse that really likes the car. But wants an upoulstry color or paint that they don’t have on the lot. Or a different option package. So you go in circles. Negotiate 45 minutes to an hour. You are now well after closing. It will be down to you, the sales guy, and the finance guy (who is actually the closer for them).
Finally, just slump in the chair with a resigned look and say, that’s just $1000 more than I had budgeted. And I want to pay cash. When your hand hits the door handle, you’ve just saved that last $1000. Or they’ll get really creative with an offer.
Thats why most people drive tiny pieces of crap over there. I remember driving in england in the 1990s. The nicest car i drove around in was a good ol american buick roadmaster station wagon. Huge car compared to what most people rode in.
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