Because it's highly lucrative. Selling an automobile based on a list price offers less potential for profit than all of the other things that dealerships do. T

Because it's highly lucrative. Selling an automobile based on a list price offers less potential for profit than all of the other things that dealerships do. They find numerous ways to milk customers out of money during a sale by jacking up the price of the car or shafting people on trade-in value. Aside from that there's financing and dealership servicing, both of which can come show high profit margins.