Bark's Bites: Are We Getting The Dealer Experience We Deserve?

In my nearly 25 years of car buying, I’ve walked into a dealership and walked out with a brand new car more times than most people would in several lifetimes. 14 times, to be exact. I’ve bought Volkswagens, Infinitis, Pontiacs, Mazdas, Fords, Chevrolets, Hyundais, and Toyotas, representing nearly every mainstream brand. And yet, only two of those 14 instances was anything resembling positive.

When I leased a Mazda CX-7 in 2008, I drove to the store in my 2005 Scion tC with two numbers in my head: $279 a month with zero down (the advertised CX-7 lease price) and $9,000 (the amount of money I believed my tC to be worth). The lease was already a strong offer, so I didn’t feel the need to negotiate further, and my trade valuation was based on one thing only — as with most shoppers, it was exactly the amount of money I needed to pay off my loan. The dealer quickly agreed to my terms, as he knew he would be able to sell the tC for $10,500 within 30 days.

The second time? We’ll get to that. But the other 12 times? As Dr. Dre once said, it was like muthaf–kin’ Vietnam. And in all honesty, I have nobody to blame for that but myself.

As car buyers, we expect everything to go our way, don’t we? We want the most money for our trade, but we also want to pay the least amount of money possible for our new car. We want our salesperson to know more about the car than its engineers, but we don’t want them to make any money at all for selling us the car. We want the F&I manager to fight like hell to get us the best rates, but we’d prefer that he get us in and out of his office in two minutes flat without asking us to buy gap insurance or extended warranties.

In other words, we’re awful people. We treat buying a car differently than we treat any other purchase experience. We transform from normal, rational people to sellers in the markets of Mumbai. And it’s because of us that the dealership model is the way it is. We want everything to go our way, we want the experience to be top-notch, but we aren’t willing to pay one extra dime to make it that way. So we deal with terrible salespeople, dirty stores, F&I offices that feel like saunas, and we all walk away feeling dirty.

Now, hold on, you might say, we only behave the way we do because of the broken franchise model. And you might have a point. It’s a chicken-or-the-egg sort of situation. If the dealers would just be honest and forthright, as was suggested in this space only a week ago, we wouldn’t have to treat them like our mortal enemies. But the replies in the comments last week indicated to me that the dealer could show you his financial statements, drop his pants, and bend over directly in front of you, and you’d still think that you were the one getting screwed.

But you’ll gladly go to the Apple Store and pay $750 for a phone that cost $25 to make and walk out completely happy. Scratch that — you’ll wait in line for the opportunity to do it! And you don’t even care because you know that anybody who bought that phone paid exactly the same amount as you did. Nobody got screwed.

Wrong. Everybody’s getting screwed. And that’s exactly what would happen in a direct-selling environment, too.

Oh, were you thinking that the OEMs wouldn’t take every opportunity to pocket cash? Or that owning and operating thousands of factory-owned stores would somehow cost less money for an OEM than selling cars to franchisees and walking away, scot-free? There’s a reason that franchises exist, and it’s not because of laws. It’s because the OEMs don’t want the risk of operating their own locations. They sure as hell aren’t going to want to own a twenty-unit-a-month store in Silver Lake, Indiana; Rapid City, South Dakota; Belleville, Illinois.

And OEMs wouldn’t be satisfied to make zero dollars selling new cars, like franchisees often are, just so they can funnel more traffic to their service departments and get trades for the used car side. No, they’re gonna want to make straight cash, homie. So all of you who are hoping and praying for the end of the franchise model — be careful what you wish for.

But there is a solution to all this madness. We could all pay sticker.

Hear me out for a second. As anybody with an internet connection and an Instagram account knows, I bought a Focus RS not too long ago. You know how I did it? I called a dealer that had one, and offered to pay him the price on the window. He happily accepted.

I walked into the store later that night and shook the hand of a gentleman who was thrilled to be making around $4,000 on the sale of a new car. He instructed the sales rep to go fill my new car with premium gas, and walked me into the F&I office, where all the documents were ready for my signature, pre-filled out with “NO” checked on every warranty and insurance product. Moments later, I drove home in my new Focus RS, the process taking less than 30 minutes.

I returned the next day with the family to pick up my Fiesta ST I had left overnight, and the dealer had been kind enough to wash and detail it for me. Just because. He then offered to wash my Focus for me any time I happened to be around the dealership, and gave me coupons for three free oil changes.

Did I pay too much? Yes, of course I did. But, gosh, it was such a nice experience. And I couldn’t help but think most of it had nothing to do with the price I paid, but rather the lack of an adversarial contest between myself and the dealer. In fact, even if there had only been $1,500 baked into the sale (which is about the average front end gross profit on a new car), I think it would have been just as nice.

So couldn’t we agree with our frienemies, the dealership? Couldn’t we agree to pay just a bit more so that they could hire knowledgeable salespeople instead of overweight tech school rejects? Couldn’t we sacrifice a dollar or two so that we wouldn’t be locked in a hot, sweaty F&I office for hours on end? Couldn’t we agree to maintain our cars a little better so that the dealer could make us a fair offer on our trades the first time?

In other words, can’t we all just get along? I think we can. But who’s going to offer the olive branch first?