Why Are Car Dealerships Backwards?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could walk into a car dealership and say “I want this model, this color, with a hybrid engine, rear wing spoiler, bose sound system, leather seats, no sunroof, no sirius radio, etc.”?

The car dealer would say “ok, we’ll have that for you in 3 weeks. See you then.”

Life would be great.

Instead, we’re left to pick with whatever is left on the lot – and it’s driving me crazy.

I’m trying to buy a Mazda6, in red or black, with a wing spoiler, 6 cyllinder engine, leather seats, bose sound. Unfortunately, I can’t find one that doesn’t include the $400 sirius radio, or the $1000 sunroof options. It just seems silly to me to pay $1400 for options that I don’t want in my car.

In addition, none of these cars seem to have the iPod adapter that mazda offers built in – so I’d have to pay more to have it added after the fact. Does this seem silly to anybody else?

Imagine if your local steak place worked this way:

“Hi, I’d like a filet mignon, medium rare, with wild mushroom ragot and a baked potato.”

“oh, I’m sorry sir. In order to get the wild mushroom ragot sauce you’d have to get the sirloin, and that only comes in well done. If you want the filet though, we have a nice medium rare with barbecue sauce and steak fries.”

Why do we put up with this crap from car dealerships when it obviously wouldn’t fly in other industries?

March 13th, 2007