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Great for them too, since buying a car from a dealership is one of the biggest scams the average family walks in to on a regular basis. This is especially true

by easong 13y ago

Great for them too, since buying a car from a dealership is one of the biggest scams the average family walks in to on a regular basis. This is especially true in poor rural areas where cars are non-optional - there's a reason that the owner of the local car dealerships is frequently the one of if not the wealthiest man in the county.

sliverstorm 13y ago
Without more proof, I'm not buying that rural car dealerships make their owners wealthy. I suspect it's the other way around, you can't own & resell (as that is how it works) fifty vehicles without a good chunk of change already in your pocket.
- easong 13y ago
  Googling for statistics about the profitability of rural car ownership seems to be a fruitless task, so I can only speak from the anecdotal experience of one who has spent most of their life 1. living in rural areas and 2. has worked for and started businesses providing services to rural car dealers with the son of a big-shot sales manager for multiple dealers. (Alarms/physical security and web services/social media bullshit, respectively.) Every car dealership I worked with had obscene profit margins (primarily from service), dealerships routinely collaborated with each other (a handful of old men owned most of the major dealerships for hundreds of miles and went to lunch together regularly), and all had nothing short of abusive business practices. Most of the owners had started out as salesmen and eventually worked up enough money to get a dealership of their own, at which point they rapidly expanded to multiple dealerships (which would imply a well above average rate of return on investment.) Thankfully the 2008 crash gutted a lot of them. Hopefully tesla and the manufacturers can deliver a killing (legal) blow - without government-enforced monopoly status, they'll die quickly because they really don't really add any value to the consumer and cost tons of money. Sorry for the rant, the entire subject is infuriating.

by easong 13y ago

sliverstorm 13y ago

Without more proof, I'm not buying that rural car dealerships make their owners wealthy. I suspect it's the other way around, you can't own & resell (as that is how it works) fifty vehicles without a good chunk of change already in your pocket.

easong 13y ago
Googling for statistics about the profitability of rural car ownership seems to be a fruitless task, so I can only speak from the anecdotal experience of one who has spent most of their life 1. living in rural areas and 2. has worked for and started businesses providing services to rural car dealers with the son of a big-shot sales manager for multiple dealers. (Alarms/physical security and web services/social media bullshit, respectively.) Every car dealership I worked with had obscene profit margins (primarily from service), dealerships routinely collaborated with each other (a handful of old men owned most of the major dealerships for hundreds of miles and went to lunch together regularly), and all had nothing short of abusive business practices. Most of the owners had started out as salesmen and eventually worked up enough money to get a dealership of their own, at which point they rapidly expanded to multiple dealerships (which would imply a well above average rate of return on investment.) Thankfully the 2008 crash gutted a lot of them. Hopefully tesla and the manufacturers can deliver a killing (legal) blow - without government-enforced monopoly status, they'll die quickly because they really don't really add any value to the consumer and cost tons of money. Sorry for the rant, the entire subject is infuriating.