Quote:
Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo
For those that actually want to see a car and drive it before they commit, you just need a venue that acts as a showroom, where a potential customer can look at it in person, book a test drive, then the sale side of it can be done online.
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Who's going to pay for that? The manufacturers won't which is why we ended up with the dealer experience for stock holding, test drives, warranty and servicing.
You take all that away then fine, you go order a car just knowing price, specs etc and if you don't like how it drive tough sh!t you bought it off the shelf and unless it's not fit for purpose you'll have to take the manufacturer to court for a refund for "change of mind".
I'm not arguing against a future model of car sales you're talking about, but it's not a win/win, there's a downside. We had the dealership model because manufacturers don't like dealing with the general public, wasting time with them, buying land for showrooms and so on. If the model changes I doubt they'll supply test drive cars if there's supply issues, low stock etc. You just get what you bought (like tesla and all their f/f or other problems).
Again, not a problem with it but consumer expectation has to be dropped, you don't test drive a house or all the big dollar stuff people buy - or even sub 10K stuff), so people got to get used to buying cars without a test drive or showroom if you think online buying is the future.
E: You can't cut out the middleman but still expect the services that the middleman only supplied. Manufacturers aren't going to supply that service or eat that cost.
On another note, every ebay ford parts supplier I've used seems to be closing ;(