Don't even have to go far for the lobbying, there are a lot of politicians who own or are involved with car dealerships directly :|

Manufacturers love the dealership model, because those shitty middlemen at the dealerships shield the manufacturers from direct contact with the consumer and all of the consumer's problems and complaints. And the dealerships absorb the costs of holding inventory and investing in the real estate square footage required to sell cars.

People like to hate on Tesla around here, but they were at least fighting the good fight against dealers. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason still counts.

What's the name of the dealer

If they pulled that shit on me I would roll up with a fucking news truck

The dealerships were supposed to protect the consumer from the auto manufacturers. Who would've guessed they wound up being the bad guys? /s

You don't need to be smart to be a car salesman. I think it may actually be a hindrance.

I had a salesman tell me once that I could get a really good deal on an R32. Someone at the dealership took it out for a joyride and rolled it, but because it wasn’t insured, they slapped it back together and sold it with a clean title.

Another time I had a sales guy try to sell me a truck with 100k miles put on it in 12 months with no maintenance records.

I wondered the same lol.

But he was all around off putting.

I found the Maverick on their website and was amazed. It was a limited edition with all the features for around $40k if I remember right and was right around the corner from where I worked. So I knew I wanted it and went to see it as soon as I got off of work.

Walked into the dealership and asked them about their Mavericks. They said they had 4 available with one person actively signing the paperwork to take one of them home today. I asked about the available trims and they listed them but none matched the one I saw online so I felt I needed to now bring up the exact one I saw online (didn’t want to make it obvious I wanted this so they could upsell me, but when they didn’t list it off, I knew I lost my edge and might be wasting my time).

When the salesman saw the one on the website and the price he literally laughed and said they would never have anything like this for that price on their lot. He said they immediately put a $4,500 markup on all Mavericks.

I honestly wanted to walk when I heard that but my mom and her husband wanted to still give them a chance so we went on a test drive and that’s when he told us the markup on the Lightnings too.

He had also asked me about what I did for work and when I mentioned some of the stuff I did, he made a condescending remark to me too. Can’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember the feeling of disrespect.

Just all around was one of the strangest dealership visits I’ve ever had. Never found someone who made me feel like wanting to run so bad.

As I write this…makes me wonder if he didn’t like me and wanted to chase me off by being as off putting as possible.

Because this was during peak pandemic stock shortages when dealerships were selling everything they had with zero effort. They had a free years there where they had salesmen who never had to put any effort into selling a car.

After driving both I went with the lightning.

The R1T is cool. It’s a single person camping truck all the way. A little smaller, more capable of getting in and out of tight places that are predominately Jeep accessible. But the center rear seat is very uncomfortable, the payload capacity is lower both size and weight wise, and for me being forced in to one pedal driving was not ideal.

The lightning is wider, and heavier. But also more comfortable for everyone inside, can tow better, and I have loved having the power options, no need for a generator.

The audiences are similar but a bit different. I do think that Ford is nuts for saying there’s no demand. Make the ER pro for 50k and you could sell them all day. But you can’t even order that option, much less get it for that price. Maybe it costs more than to produce, but I’m willing to bet not. They would just need to be able to sell them direct to public to make it worth it and most states don’t allow for it.

There was demand, and then you see a sticker that says $15,000 dealership markup and you walked away.

Initially, yeah. But it looks like things cooled after the initial wave of people who were eager for an EV pickup.