The brand image, the social media activities, the fine food, it all converts to a monthly payment and dealing with the deficiency of the trade in once the customer/prospect is in the showroom.

As for the Regal, its an excellent car, except that most folks are not prepared to put 40K on a Regal, but they will put 30K on a Verano. Perhaps the Regal is the "halo car" that moves Verano's.

Perhaps the dealer advertising a dollar down payment, received a mid month e-mail from the manufacturer rising the volume bonus for May.

Buick has about 2,400 dealers nationwide, meaning that the average Buick dealer sold 7.5 new Buicks last month. Speaking as someone with a few years of dealership management experience, that's a very scary number.

Granted, there aren't a lot of stand-alone Buick dealers in the world, so it's not as if they have to "survive" on just 7.5 new car sales…but it does mean that you can become very desperate to sell any new Buick you can.

Contrast this number with Toyota, which sold 180,000 new vehicles via 1,250 dealers (144 new cars per dealer). At a Toyota store, you spend a lot less time staring at your co-workers, which in turn means that you don't feel compelled to resort to desperate advertising.

While it's a little more complicated than this (some dealers are just bad), as a general rule, reducing dealer head count raises the quality of marketing.