> All that land they own can be used for productive economic activity or housing.
No it can't. You still need places where cars can be repaired as well as storage for parts/cars inventory. The only way you reclaim some land is if service gets worse.
Edit: For example, Tesla sells direct to consumers but there's still a Tesla "showroom" in my town. In terms of footprint/appearance it's basically a dealership. So where are the land savings?
> No it can't. You still need places where cars can be repaired as well as storage for parts/cars inventory. The only way you reclaim some land is if service gets worse.
You probably aren't going to have 10 Ford dealerships in town all selling the same models of cars. That's where the space savings comes in.
As for parts/service, that also gets more streamlined as you aren't likely to have the audi/ford/dodge dealerships and instead just the 1 ford manufacturer in town.
What competition? We are talking about ford. It's not like these dealers are making ford vehicles or getting different prices from the manufacture.
The competition is that besides ford there's going to be a GM, stellates, and Audi lot (probably).
If we want more competition, we get it not by having dealers competing over who can screw you the most with the best hidden fee, we get it by adding more car manufacturers.
Yeah, the footprint of my local mechanics are peanuts compared to the gigantic parking lots gobbled up by dealerships. Parts take space, but not 5 acres of space.
The difference is those places could be relocated to where all the other warehouses are, out in the boonies, rather in the city where we want housing and business. The only places that can't move are repair shops, which have a much smaller footprint than an entire dealership and are thus not a problem to keep around
The original purpose of dealerships was to isolate "vehicle manufacturer going bankrupt" from "organization you bought your car from going bankrupt" events.
The idea was "if you buy a VinFast" from vinfast and they exit the market, you're 100% hosed, but if you buy a VinFast from "Karl Marx VinFast and Fiskar Dealerships of North Idaho" you can go back and talk to KMoNI Inc about your new car.
The dealership model was established a very long time ago back in the cambrian explosion era of car manufacterers and people were buying cars from companies like Auburn, Cole, Crow, Davis, Dixie, Durant, Elcar, Grant, King, Kline, Lafayette, Kurtz, Marmon, Mercer, Overland, Peerless, Pilot, Roamer, Saxon, Stearns, Velie, Wescott and Winton [1] and then the company would vanish and there would be no support.
Towns don’t all need one Unilever store to sell your Ben&Jerry’s, your Dove body wash, and your Hellmans Mayo, then a separate Procter and Gamble store that sells Tide, Pampers and Bounty.
Why can’t you just get all the main car brands at Costco?
No it can't. You still need places where cars can be repaired as well as storage for parts/cars inventory. The only way you reclaim some land is if service gets worse.
Edit: For example, Tesla sells direct to consumers but there's still a Tesla "showroom" in my town. In terms of footprint/appearance it's basically a dealership. So where are the land savings?