End The Dealership Business Model?

If you could simply order a new vehicle built to your specifications from the manufacturer, and bypass dealerships and sales personnel, would you? Dealerships would remain as service, parts, and used vehicle sales.

Personally, even if it meant buying new vehicles at MSRP from here on out, I’d rather order it myself and get precisely the configuration I want.

 

Lobbyists have more power than we do. Won't see it in our life time. Franchise laws ain't going away any time soon.

 

Pretty soon you’ll be able to buy them off Amazon with free prime 2 day shipping and free returns.

A guy can dream right…

 

Love to haggle with them and get to a bottom line, then see the look on their faces when I say "now deduct your holdback!". Fun times indeed!

 

I saved over $10k off MSRP. No way would I want to lose the ability to do that!

 

I think the real issue is that the manufacturers have zero interest in direct to consumer sales. They don’t want to deal with 100 of thousands of customers for every deal. They are perfectly content selling to dealers where they can sell in bulk and let the dealer deal with the individual sales

 

I would never spend this much money on something I can’t see in person and test drive before purchasing.

 

this ^ no way I am buying any vehicle without looking at and driving it first

 

Or more to the point, the manufacturers don't want to run a service/repair shop.

 

Or deal with appraising/reconditioning and selling trade ins. Or help people find financing.

 

How do you know exactly what you want unless you can go to a dealer, or some replacement of the dealer, and actually touch one? It is easy to shop online for things once you know what you want, but it is impossible to know exactly how something looks, feels, and functions without seeing it and even experiencing it in person.

 

Maybe we might be able buy them at SuperClub!

 

Would definitely love to! I thoroughly research what I am looking for. For the past 10 years I have known more about my vehicles (including motorcycles) than the sales reps. The argument that they are there to demonstrate/explain the product features is very stale. Most of them are only there to take as much $$ as they can out of your wallet to pay for the fancy building. The fancy building wouldn't be necessary if it was just parts and service. I can't think of any other product where the process is several hours and you have to find all the hidden fees and figure out where you are getting ripped off.

 

Easy solution. Regional test drive centers.

 

Isn’t this the model Tesla is using? Seems to be working so far.

 

I like the idea of ordering exactly what you want, but that doesn't exactly help production efficiency.