As my friends know I have been in the retail car business since 1984. I have been fortunate enough to be able to make a living at it and the car business has been my career, allowing me to play in my hobby so to speak.
So after 33 years of doing this and doing jobs from salesman, service advisor, parts sales even cleaning cars I thought I would talk about some of the experiences and falsehoods that we still run into today.
My first topic will be new car pricing, or further explaining what dealerships pay for vehicles and the “great deals” one dealer seems to be able to do vs another.
First and foremost we are a franchise, no different than a McDonald’s or Pet Value. What this means is that we all pay the same price to the manufacturer for vehicles, parts etc. If you don’t believe that look at it this way. If you owned a McDonald’s in one part of a town and I owned the other a few miles away, what would you do if you found out that McDonald’s was selling you their burgers for a lower price? You would sue their asses off, that’s what you would do. The car industry is the same, we all pay the same price for the same car.
If any of you find this interesting I will keep posting things about buying cars etc.
I find it interesting to hear the dealer side of selling cars. My question: How come here (Chicago) I see and ad from a dealer selling car x for a lower price than another dealer selling the same car x? They are selling the same car but one is asking less due to an “end of season blowout event”. Is this even possible?
What dynamic is in place here so that they both profit?
Thank you for your question! I really can’t comment about selling cars in the USA as I know laws etc are quite different than here in Canada. A lot of it is in presentation and the small print in the ad. Lower price but different things excluded from the price? Here in Ontario we are not allowed to do that by our governing body.
Thanks for the reply. I’m going to research a little to see what are the laws in the United States, Illinois in particular.
I’d love to hear what you have to share. I have been in the car business all of my working life, including taking over as a service advisor for Gary Grant at a Chrysler dealership when he decided to make a go of it on his own.