Dealership mark-ups aren't illegal in the US, but I think it is in other countries. Some dealerships have been hit recently for other shady practices surrounding how they conned customer's with their financing practices, but not from mark-ups.
Manufactures have taken some action on certain models when they are released, but they haven't taken action across the board. The manufacturers surveillance of their dealership practices is poor and since the dealerships are simply a franchise and not owned by the manufacturer, there is little they can do legally. The laws around auto sales are definitely in the dealership's favor.
During Corvettes C8 initial frenzy, Chevy sent out a letter to dealers discouraging the practice of
adding markups after the fact. Had an agreement/order in and when you went to pick it up "Oh, that'll be an additional $10k"; dealers not worried if you backed out as they could easily get the $10k markup when the C8's were hard to get. Threats to dealers of withholding future allocations if caught doing this 'bait and switch' type of deal with regards to ADM's after initial agreement in principle to sell at MSRP.
To discourage flipping cars for profit by non-dealers, when C8 Z06 came out Chevy decreed that if someone sold within 6 months of purchase, warranty would be void for subsequent owners; original owner had (or was supposed to) to sign document at delivery agreeing to this.
Lotsa games going on in car sales apparently, really ramped up during recent crazy times since COVID. Wanna buy a halo Porsche model? Well then, buy (2) SUV's at MSRP, sell them back to us at a depreciated price, grab another 'red headed stepchild' model with the same requirements and then you MAY get put on a list to buy that halo model...at a significant ADM.
Ferrari's are even more bizarrely apathetic with regards to reputations/sales I guess; they don't give a sh*t who they piss off :lol:
A local collector has recently taken an interest in Ferrari's...and the 3 or 4 'lesser' models purchased very recently are all in hopes of quickly developing the relationship necessary to be invited to purchase the next Ferrari 'ultra-special' model. These folks also have 6 or 8 McLarens, 2 or 3 Bugatti's, 10-20 other super/hyper cars but if you want a shot at an uber-Ferrari, get in line and play the game like everyone else (at that level, anyway). I guess money can't buy everything after all.
COVID really screwed up normalcy in the car biz, both new & used. On the plus side, Carvana did give me $20k+ for a nearly 6 year old Honda Accord with 75k hard miles on it so it's not all bad; just depends on which side of the fence you're on!
At the end of the day though, the consumer still has the power although it may mean not getting what we want. Even adjusted for inflation, some fun cars are getting out of practical reach; just for fun I configured a mid-level, not-loaded Corvette today...might be nice for wife to have one with auto-roof retract/hard top convertible (targa tops are, in the end, absurdly inconvenient; always seems like a good idea at the time :ack
. Adjusted for inflation the car has risen $20k from the price of the somewhat comparable-level we bought in 2019. Yeah, it's a C8, mid-engine, blah, blah blah (and I should get a discount for the hideous design of the thing from the back of the doors to the tail) but the mid-level Corvette pricing has moved out of affordable for many to "Yeah, that's not gonna work". Heck, even a base level Mustang GT is $42k.
Heck, I don't even know what this rambling diatribe started out about anyway...
