New Auto Dealers Association Head Continuing Strange “Get The Facts” Campaign
The new chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, William C Fox, will apparently be continuing the association’s “Get the Facts” publicity campaign — based on comments made by the new chairman during an interview with the industry trade journal Ward’s Auto.
While it’s hard to say if that publicity campaign has had any effect at all, there’s no doubt that the intent behind it is to convince consumers that making it illegal to buy direct from manufacturers is somehow in their own best interests. It’s just that they don’t realize it….
Kind of sounds like an impossible goal, but then again… you can always find contrarians, can’t you? There’s probably someone out there right now talking about how allowing Tesla to sell direct to consumers is going to harm the economy, undermine the principles that this country was founded on, etc.
Still, given all the bad will that the dealers have built up over the last few decades, who wouldn’t prefer to buy their cars direct from the manufacturers? Who the hell really wants to deal with that smug guy trying to rip you off down at the local car dealership?
The campaign is itself kind of humorous, though, in a dark-humor car-crash kind of way. The use of very “happy” and bright animations, in particular — I can’t help but feel like I’m being sold something poisonous, or something along those lines.
Anyways, as the interview revealed, the National Automobile Dealers Association is clearly just going to double down on its current strategy of open war with Tesla — and collusion with shady politicians behind the scenes, of course.
The way that the chairman described it was kind of nice, though, noting “the benefits of the dealer-franchise network,” and the fact that dealerships provide the “best, most competitive, and most cost-effective system” for customers to purchase new vehicles.
After all, “the dealer franchise model is proven to work best.”
Hmm….
Image Credit: Screen Capture
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If the dealer franchise model is THE best, most competitive, most cost effective system that works best for customers to purchase vehicles, THEN they should not worry about Tesla or the direct to customer sales model! Free market with open competition should prove who the winner is and they claimed they already are, so why spend enormous amount of time and money telling everyone that they are threatened?
Because they know exactly that they’ll lose. So they are spending a buttload of money to try and prevent that.
I don’t have to mention that they will not be able to succeed in the long run.
I’ve been thinking for a while now… how about taking a third option? Simply eliminate exclusive relationships between dealers and manufacturers, and operate them in the same way as any other retail business. Let the dealers offer whatever cars they want from whatever makers they want, and decide for themselves the merchandise mix they think is most suitable for their market.
Am I missing something that would make this impractical?
The general theme is correct however manufacturers have gone away from common parts to specialised parts catalogue to keep profit in house.
For dealers this would cause high costs to cover service training, parts inventory for each model, from each manufacturer.
Case in point the headlight assembly is now a high cost item.
I did consider after-service a bit, although not this exact point. If the dealers are unable to handle it directly, such things could be spun off to third parties or manufacturer-operated facilities through service agreements. I don’t see any problem with the makers servicing their own cars after they’ve been sold.
In other words, I was thinking about completely reorganizing the way cars are sold and maintained. The transition would certainly not be painless, but I think it could end up being more “free market” than the one that exists now.
The “intent” of the law was if Manufacturer A sells the right to sell there cars to a dealer. And the dealer invest a lot of money to set up and develop that local market. Then A can’t later come in and undersell the dealer. It had nothing to do with other manufacturers. Dealer are now trying to twist it to keep out someone who doesn’t use dealers.
The real problem for dealers is that EV has no service requirement.
A dealer can sell an ICE car at a loss and still come out in front due to high service costs.
Car dealers do not want to sell EV and if they do only with a high front end loading to cover the real profit in aftersales service.
Oh the poor car dealerships are crying alligator tears again. Half of the dealership “service” departments can’t even repair their own vehicles. Let Elon sell his EVs and let the dealerships learn a lesson about customer service instead of customer rip off.
My favor car dealer story is. I got my first new car, feeling great!. At the time Cincinnati had tail pipe/safety checks. So I drive down, pays my fee, and fail. Go back to dealer, they fix it. Back to check (which I have to pay again) and fail again, oh dear. Back to dealer, this time I went around the building and looked into service bay through open garage door. They drive the car back to machine that tests tail pipe. But the mechanic, doesn’t use it. Just lifts hood and adjusts the idle. Then leaves car, come back later (after a smoke?) and drives car to front. I ask to talk with service manager and ask point blank if they verified the fix. But of course we did! Then we had a long talk about telling lies.
For pipe emissions, you can’t do that here in California. The instruments and the test facility uploads your results to the DMV immediately.