@Joe: I’ll be curious to see how our changing driving habits will impact current dealer contracts. For example, what happens when Ford, Chevy, and Dodge dealers cut back on their orders for the largest SUVs and pickups? Part of me suspects that these recent events will either make or break the Big Three.

You can actually buy a car online (on sites like Cars.com), but how many people actually do this?

The method of car buying which prevails in America (haggling with those smarmy, aggressive salesmen in dealer showrooms) is actually a legacy of the way Henry Ford and others set up their national distribution systems.

They found (in those low tech days long before the internet) that the most profitable and efficient way of selling cars was to establish networks of local dealers, and have them operate as autonomous businesses, with their own incentives to make a profit.

Multi-year contracts with dealers were locked in, and dealerships are contractually committed to accepting and selling a certain quota of cars each year, many years in advance.

Unfortunately for us consumers, this has evolved into the car-buying nightmare we have all come to dread, where blatant, pushy, and often deceptive tactics are the norm.

Even with the internet, don’t look for this to change anytime soon, because the legal relationship between most manufacurers and their dealers is so rigid, complex, and long-term that it has a maddening inertia all its own.

My sentiments match yours re: bargaining with car salesmen. My neighbor is a car salesman and sold me my current vehicle. I couldn’t believe the amount of money that I saved by simply saying “no” repeatedly. Buy why does it need to be that way?

I like your bargaining protocol. It is similar to an approach that is advocated by one of the “tightwad” books I have. A while back they suggested finding three or four dealers with the vehicle you want, faxing each of them your offer, and instructing them to leave a message if they can accept that offer. You then simply buy from the first one who calls back and says “yes” to your answering machine/cell phone/Grand Central or whatever. No face time with dealers, no “asking the manager”, no sweat!