> US sales process was; they showed me the vehicle I had seen on their website, we drove the car, then we haggled a bit and signed contracts. US sales process w

> US sales process was; they showed me the vehicle I had seen on their website, we drove the car, then we haggled a bit and signed contracts. US sales process was much more akin to how I imagine time share sales scams work - when you think you’re done, the gauntlet of high pressure multiple-rooms-with-increasingly-“senior”-managers has just started. So basically: it's a culture thing. High pressure tactics are entrenched on the sales culture side, and the customer culture has gotten used to tolerating them. As an aside, IIRC, someone once told me that Japanese makeup is superior to and cheaper than Western makeup, because Japanese customers are picky and won't put up with less. The concept of dealerships makes some sense to me: an individual retail customer has zero leverage with a mass market manufacturer, but they'll have more leverage with a smaller dealer, and the dealer will have more leverage with the manufacturer because they're buying far more than a single person. Though the actual implementation leaves a lot to be desired.