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.
There is actually a lobbyist-driven law that forbids people from going around the dealer.
Volkswagen got in trouble with that abotu 25 years ago with a special online-edition of the Beetle. The government put a stop to that.
It was offered in a specific online only color too. I think the US managed to see about 100 of them.
I learned something about buying cars in Europe as well.
VAT tax.
So no, thank you. Will never do that.
Tesla is special in many ways.
In certain forms, they are not a car company. They are a technology company. Use the same loophole Uber and Lyft use to have otherwise illegal taxis driven by morons.
Tesla circumvents a LOT of laws that auto manufacturers have to comply with. Greasing politician hands allows that to happen.
Elon Musk got the majority of his money from Obama, played the Solar panel alternative-fuel subsidy game and then went on to apply his technique in every aspect of his fields.
This guy drills below ground with relative impunity. He has a space program which is illegal by international law, and is dropping implants into animals with NO legal ability to do so. But he is creative in the law and puts a ton of money in the hands of the same politicians who claim to hate him.
Elon Musk is proof that everything is a goddam act.
BMW manufacturing in South Carolina has a pick up at the factory deal. Fly in, factory tour, some instruction on features of your vehicle, test track drive, and on your way.
https://bmwperformancecenter.com/deliveryfaq
The car is an appliance, it’s nothing more than a refrigerator or a stove with wheels on it and brakes. It will get you from point A to point B, safely.
That’s how you have to look at a vehicle, when your in the market.
I bought a car at CarMax, smooth transaction best deal I think I’ve ever made on a two-year used, fleet vehicle. All mileages are 25k or thereabouts.
For years and years the new car dealership actually made very little money on selling new cars. The majority of their money, the majority of their profit was from the sale of used cars. Used cars sold off of their lot and used cars they took as trade-ins when customers bought new cars.
So that leaves new car dealerships making all the rest of their profits selling new cars? Nope. Their sales and service department was their second biggest source of profit.
Then last and least was the profit made off of new car sales. And even that may be open for debate. As anyone who has ever been in a finance office knows; thousands and thousands of dollars can be added on by the finance manager in deceitful and crooked policies and protection plans.
No she doesn’t.
She seems to talk about buying right from the mfr SIGHT-UNSEEN in England.
That to us is “ordering”.
She totally neglects ordering from a dealer. You don’t HAVE to buy off the lot. I do. I do not want to buy a huge thing like a car sight-unseen with no test drive for said car. But it is not a necessity.
How, honestly, is this really different from buying much smaller items? For ages stores have bought “wholesale” from the mfr, then the STORE customers buy “retail”.
Buying a car in the USA is still a lot easier than getting dental care in the UK.
He has spent a year trying to understand and has not yet understood. His problem is that he doesn’t really understand supply and demand. No. The dealer can, indeed, put any price he likes on his stock but that does not mean that he can get that price. If his prices are too high, he will deal them down until he can sell his stock and sometimes that can be less than his price from the factory which also is adjustable if the factory is priced too high to sell to the dealer.
I walk into a VW dealer in Fairfax Virginia in around 1973 or 4 with cash and I wanted a bug Wolfsburg Edition, well I’m standing there I got my work boot, jean flannel shirt it’s been kind of a long day at work and finally...
One of the salesman glances over from his BS session and gives me this of raised eyebrow can I help you?
Gotta minute?
Needless to say I played that a-hole like a fish for the rest of the day. Didn’t get the bug either.
When I sold new cars, every now and then a customer would say, "What's your best price?" And I would say that my best price is the one on the window. Then I would ask, "What's your best price?"
My experience was that while most people were aggravated by the process, they felt it was necessary to get a good deal. There are some dealerships that have gone to a non-negotiable sale price, but I'm not sure if that is the preferred way these days. And when there's a trade-in, it's a whole different story. No two used cars are the same, and the values can vary.
The Steal changed everything.
Thanks to Derp State, autom manufacturers stateside have been moving to Europe’s made to order model.
If you need something in a hurry, be prepared to pay MSRP, drive a distance if your local dealers don’t have it and dealers trading has become a thing of the past.
Dealerships will now be there to order your car for you and repair it.
Note to salespeople: If you want a job, train to be an auto tech. Sales jobs days are numbered.
“...this is how I think y’all buy cars.”
There’s a phrase: “Sod off.” whatever that means.
I’m not a BMW guy, but I really should do a day trip to do the tour.
Yes. That what I meant by uneducated.
England is about the size of Oregon, about twice the size of Mississippi, and that is not including Scotland and Wales.
Car dealers will first try to get you for anything offering way over, and then if you walk out, the sales manager will offer it at less than they can sell it.
I used to work for a copier(remember those) company we’ll call Brand X. There were no published list prices for those X copiers. A sales rep could charge as little as 85% of those unpublished prices which only his management was supposed to know (but we figured them out) with special permission and a lot of pleading.
On the plus side, if he could get away with it, he could charge 250% of the mythical price and split the excess three ways with himself, his boss and Rochester, I mean the home office.
Somehow that business model failed when the Japanese started selling really nice copiers for a whole lot less.
Hazel doesn’t know what she is talking about, so she fits right in at “The Drive”. For example, the Honda dealership in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is very similar to the one in Carlsbad, California, with respect to layout, building design, sales people, and buying process. In neither case can a customer buy a car direct from the factory and in both cases negotiation is expected. Also, in both cases, one can buy a car online without setting a foot in the physical dealership.
Hazel doesn’t know what she is talking about, so she fits right in at “The Drive”. For example, the Honda dealership in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is very similar to the one in Carlsbad, California, with respect to layout, building design, sales people, and buying process. In neither case can a customer buy a car direct from the factory and in both cases negotiation is expected. Also, in both cases, one can buy a car online without setting a foot in the physical dealership.
I’ve bought my last two vehicles at CarMax. One had 7k miles the other 14k. Will never go to a new car dealer again.
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