Maverick787

Bingo! Should be able to order a car online, and it's gets shipped to your home B to B. Build MTC centers with cars on displays to test drives, and all sales go into a demand queuing first come first served. System recognizes how much a person has spent on the brand, and the get priority. It's called a loyalty system no different when I go to the Marriott or get upgraded on a flight based on the spending no magic list it's automated.

ShakeNBake

We tried to give the middle finger to those laws in the early 2000s at a company called "Car Order", and $200M later, no dice. I hope Tesla can do it.

Maverick787

I miss that one, I need to research it!

STG

Won't change.

http://www.autonews.com/article/2006...%3A-no-contest

As far as Tesla, their model won't work long term. As other companies put up competition for them, they'll suffer. Long term, they don't have a future doing business the way they are. They are overhyped.

If there is a bigger market for electric cars outside of CA and NY, the bigger car companies will be making more models and doing a lot better job with service and a dealer network. I think mainstream electric cars are still VERY far out in the future.

ShakeNBake

I don't disagree on Tesla - but of anyone (regardless of Tesla's long term efficacy), they are the closest to forcing a change...at least in some states.

Also. their value is more an indication of the value of Musk....that guy is a true modern bad-***, and I'd argue that point over at least a beer or two.

hf1

Still, that's the problem, and nothing else. All other 'solutions' proposed in this thread are mere attempts to minimize the damage of this extortion to one group or another. Weird how a democratic system is unable to stop a crooked minority from extorting everyone else. Subjects merely resign themselves to the 'laws' enforcing the obvious extortion.

STG

If the car business was direct manufacturer to consumer, the consumer would pay more overall.

The competitive nature of franchised dealers give consumers better pricing they can shop around for. After all, who really pays MSRP for 99.5% of cars out there?

This "GT car issue" isn't really a first world problem. It's the manufacturer limiting supply voluntarily. Write a letter to Porsche and see if they care.

Want a cause to fight about? How about our income taxes and big gov't waste?

robmypro

These discussions remind me of how the cost of college was impacted by a desire to make college more accessible. When I was in college it was expensive, but not crazy expensive. I worked part-time to pay my room and board, and my parents covered tuition. Then someone comes along and decides it is a right for everyone to get an education, and before you know it the cost skyrockets. Then you need big loans, which leads to colleges ripping off the taxpayer, and to a student loan debacle. And that led the government to make loans harder to get, and harder to pay back.

When it is all said and done, college is once again not available to everyone.

So if Porsche goes out and builds more cars so everyone who wants one can get a GT car, i would expect a similar outcome. Porsche does it once, the economy crashes, Porsche almost goes bankrupt, and slows production, and once again, GT cars are hard to get.

Some things are better left alone.

hf1

What's so 'competitive' about the 'franchised' dealers'? You don't need 'franchise law' to open a dealership and compete. A manufacturer could be selling to dealers, customers, or anyone else they want. If they want a franchised dealer network, they could have that too. They don't need a franchise law for that.

If you dig under their pretty surface, 99.99% of laws are mere ways for some crooked minority to 'legitimately' extort someone else. But this is not the proper forum for this subject.

gt-2

Tesla hasn't and won't force change of anything, .....they simply have 2 strong things going for them on a temporary time frame, unit demand and publicity. They have no established way to take trade in's back in on any large scale (and when they do they will compete against themselves on the new car side of things), the current sales process is great until demand sinks, they haven't proven to produce at levels needed to bring profits per unit up and reduce costs down per unit. They do have very innovative cars but the technology they are investing in is already old and outdated and we will see more change in battery technology in next 2-4 years then we have seeen in last 20. Porsche wouldn't be here today if they used tesla model for selling cars back just as recently as a couple decades ago, dealers push inventory out front doors when NO ONE WANTS IT (and of course pay for that inventory up front when they are invoiced to dealer by Porsche so Porsche doesn't go cash broke on huge inventory buildup sitting or waiting until customer pays for car to get cash flow back). Manufacturers and dealers know the current system needs improvement and lots more transparency and it's coming but Tesla didn't cause this focus......the internet era did.

ExMB

You do mean our elected officials, the politicians, don't you?

Pokerhobo

Did you consider that direct manufacturer to consumer means the manufacturers would be competing directly instead of selling at bulk to dealers. MSRP has profit built in for the dealers not the car manufacturers (the risk of having cars sitting on lots). Presumably with a direct and made-to-order market, everyone would be paying invoice price.

Pokerhobo

For those of you suggesting Porsche continue to raise MSRP to lower demand, see what happened to the GT-R. Started at $70k, then $77k, then $81k, then $85k, then $91k, then $98k, $100k, $103k, now $110k. The problem is raising the price when the market is good, can you lower the price when the marke gets cold and suppress resale of older models which in turn makes future models less desirable because of the risk of another lowering of price?

gt-2

Many are assuming far too much.......the manufacturer then incurs a much larger scale of marketing dollars (dealers account for billions in tier 1 marketing in local markets each year). They also then incur the carrying costs of producing and stocking all the inventory that currently the dealers typically keep on hand. The costs on a large scale go spiraling out of control quickly in even a mild market downturn. So no the manufacturer isn't guaranteed to just offer invoice costs despite everyone thinking the middleman dealers are out of picture. I think many are not considering many factors that can and have taken place. Manufacturers suck at selling cars when they aren't in major demand. Some would then say, then just produce less to keep the demand high but it doesn't work like that. They want to produce as many as can be reasonably produced to get to breakeven then enough more to get to a profit and sometimes supply/demand doesn't work perfectly based on logistics and production planning well ahead of time. Look at history......they have tried and failed many attempts (of course some failures were due to dealer recourse at the attempt by car builders to take over sales). Trust me they can't pull it off despite how smart you think they are.

ExMB

And if you look at the invoice you will find that most dealers signed up for a factory program and directly charge that cost back to the buyer by claiming its all part of invoice pricing.