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American here. I've done this crazy thing when I want an exact vehicle: I order it.

Yes, you wait. You may be waiting quite a while for a dealer to give you one of their allocations. But you get exactly what you want. If you go around to dealerships and make it clear you're serious, you'll even pay no more than you would otherwise. Negotiate price no differently. This market is a bit of a nuisance, but even now the vet salespeople will still play ball, because someone that serious is actually an easy sale. They'll still sell what's on the lot or floor plan, but now they just sold ANOTHER car. Know several people recently who've done just this.

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Not limited to luxury vehicles either. Had someone at somewhere I was doing consulting for ask me about how he'd go about it for a Subaru Legacy, in the base trim, with ALMOST NO OPTIONS. He wanted exactly what he wanted, and nothing more. Told him just to go do it.

He did. He waited about 4.5 months (because it had to be built per the build schedule, then shipped on a boat!), but he got exactly what he wanted, for the price he asked for. To him it was completely worth not having it, "right now". He told me that after seeing how relatively little work was involved, he'd never buy a car off the lot again.

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Average sale price of a new car in the US is $48K. People regularly pay $60-130K (or far more!) for luxury cars. Sorry, I can't compromise on something with a 5-digit (or 6-digit) price tag.

Just be careful you don't order from a dealer. Order directly from the mfg.

I once ordered from a dealer, left a deposit, waited 3 months (with no car at the time so busses and friends), they claimed it came in on a Sunday. I said I'd be in Monday morning since my bank is closed on Sunday. They sold it to someone else, told me I could order again and wait another 3 months if I wanted.

Since the deposit wasn't tied to a VIN or something there was nothing I could do.

The dealership model needs to die.

American culture is all about the price being the price. With dealerships, you're haggling just to get the price down to the normal goddamn price, just because of middlemen.

I am happy to pay The Price if it means no bullshit and an assurance I'm not getting screwed. Make your car decisions based on the merits of the vehicle.

> American culture is all about the price being the price.

Variable sales tax rates depending on locale / product / usage / other arcane rules; variable tipping rates based on type of service rendered, customs, etc.; services charges, delivery fees, resort fees, convenience (of printing your own ticket) fees, so on and so forth...

No, I think Americans are quite used to not just paying list price.

Tipping was the first thing I thought of when reading the parent post. I'd call it another cultural outlier. Most American retail stores and activities do not involve tipping. The one big exception is eating at non-fast-food restaurants.

Meanwhile though, literally everything done by people living in young urban "gentrified" areas seems to involve tipping.

You can always take back your deposit.

But I can't take back my 3 months of waiting

When I lived in the US ten years ago some of the luxury dealers (definitely BMW, I seem to recall Porsche too) had these programs where you’d buy a US-spec’d but take delivery of it in Europe. So you’d get exactly what you want, fly to Germany, drive it around there for a week, and then they’d ship it over. There was some reason why that ended up being cheaper than driving the equivalent car straight off the lot in the US though the reason escapes me now. When you factored in flights and other costs it netted out about the same, except you got to spend a week or so in Europe too.

Sadly it always remained aspirational as I never could quite bring myself to justify spending that much on a car I’d barely use.

It's not a new car when it's brought through customs, so you save a bunch on duties.

Do you know what name or search keywords to use to learn more about these offers?

'European Delivery' should get you started, that's what BMW uses.

You're gonna want that TrueCoat though...

When I was buying my car in Australia my dealer was pretty up-front:

* buy off the lot, and get a discount

* they could buy from another dealer for me out of state but then there’s transport costs etc so it’s less cost effective

* factory order

And they didn’t care if I wanted to factory order and they were stuck with the cars on their lot, they’d facilitate it.

European here. When I want a new (to me) car, I go on mobile.de, find the one I want and go buy it.

Unless it's a Rolls Royce, a brand new model or facing significant supply shortages, there's almost no point in ordering a new car from the factory. Cheaper and faster to buy a lightly used one, generally it's trivial to find fully optioned examples.

I'm not saying you HAVE to order a car. My point is if you want something very specific, you have to put in the effort.

Especially because when dealers order 300+ cars in one go (for the next few months) to stick on their floor plan, they aren't getting weird with options. They stick to what they know sells, with options the average buyer wants (or won't balk over), and hits their revenue and margin targets. To most people cars are an appliance. There's only a few configurations they're going to order. Moreover, it's rare for them to order a stripped out model -- they're not popular with buyers, and less gross margin.

You can search national inventories, find the exact car sitting somewhere and go get it. Hell, most local dealerships who DON'T have the car themselves will be more than happy to trade something they have to the dealer (of the same brand) that possesses what you want so they get the sale. Make some phone calls, and one will play ball and do most of the work for you.

Point was sometimes there isn't a free lunch, especially if a person is going to be particularly choosy about the specifics of what they want and be salty over anything else.

> I’m amazed a car manufacturer could resort to these games. If they want to increase profits, why not just focus on customers and give customers what they want?

The name of the game now in more and more industries is rent-seeking and extracting money long term, on a regular basis. This new business practice disincentivizes building quality products because then you can sell a shoddy product and include "maintenance" and "updates" into your subscription plan.

If it's not stopped legally, it'll only get worse.

> rent-seeking and extracting money long term, on a regular basis

recurring revenue is what you're talking about, it's a financially desirable thing for them, but it's not the same thing as rent seeking. Rent seeking is not receiving payments over and over on a regular basis, rather it's a term economists use to mean making money from your position in the market without contributing anything of value to the market (without putting in any work, so to speak). For example, "monopoly rents" are the extra parts of the prices that monopolies can charge because they face no competition.

add-ons to a major expense like an automobile can qualify as rents because once you buy the car, you are essentially trapped into buying the add-ons from the one manufacturer, like being forced to get your car serviced at the dealer.

hrm, interesting... by that definition I would argue that the business model of car dealerships is specifically rent-seeking. They not only don't contribute anything of value, they actively detract from the value proposition by marking up far over MSRP and, like someone posted in another comment, engaging in shady tactics like selling your vehicle to someone else after waiting for 3mo because your bank isn't open until tomorrow. Just to scratch the surface.

The vendor still had to invest money to put the feature there, so it's a legit business transaction, even if it sounds silly. Presumably the monthly cost will be a lot less than the hundreds it would cost to buy the feature outright. Or are they charging people twice?

Precisely. This is the kind of legislation that benefits all the residents of a state.

Subscription predation is poorly regulated. Starting with cars seems like an obvious target.

Considering the volume, why not start with software?

The kind of software that truly depends on a server or some live resource that must be actively maintained and kept running can genuinely make a claim to charge a reasonable recurring fee to use said software. But for software that is essentially a standalone product which needs no upgrades, one should be able to buy the current version of the software and keep using that specific version of that software indefinitely, just as if one had bought a hammer or some other tool that will permanently belong to you, with no monthly subscription.

That just creates a loophole. Perhaps it is a "smart" heated seat. You can make anything need a live internet connection by putting some adaptive "benefits" in it. Now they'll just monetize your minute-to-minute-butt-temperature data too.

That’s mostly in industries without meaningful competition.

In competitive industries, customer-hostile choices are much less common.

In competitive industries, customer-hostile choices are much less common.

How many brands of TV are there? How many of those brands still make even one consumer model that isn't "smart" in user-hostile ways?

Having lots of suppliers doesn't necessarily create effective competition in the customer interest. If there's a customer-hostile practice that makes lots of money and is sufficiently obvious that all suppliers can adopt it without any need for legally questionable forms of cooperation then what is going to happen?

Effectively forcing subscriptions or other after-purchase limitations and costs on customers when there is nothing in it for those customer to balance what they lose is exactly the kind of predatory behaviour that government regulation should protect against.

That’s the party line. In reality cars are one of the most heavily competitive consumer markets, and guess what? They still behave like assholes.

The brands compete. The dealers are local monopolies. Usually by law.

The brands compete on the kinds of cars they want to sell. When it comes to less profitable kinds of vehicles, that's where lobbying and regulatory capture comes in to kill competition. Thus we have the chicken tax, much stricter fuel economy standards for small trucks than big trucks, and the extreme protectionism in the inflation reduction act when it comes to EV tax credits.

It's the brands trying so sell you subscription seat warming, not the local dealers.

Interesting point!

But the locality is typically only a town. Emailing all the dealers in the area for a quote and driving a bit out of your way to pick up the car isn't that hard.

There’s a dozen GM brand dealers within 15 miles of where I’m sitting right now. They absolutely compete.

>I tried contacting the dealer directly, and they simply told me they can’t help me, period, and my only option is to talk to the dealer.

These are the kinds of games that causes Tesla to not sell cars directly to people in Texas. Want to sell a car in Texas? Got to have a dealership and the games that come along with that. You're not allowed to make a product and sell directly to the consumer when it comes to autos. That's how we do it in the business friendly state of Texas!?!?

Well yes, that is very business friendly! It's just not consumer friendly.

Car availability has been awful though. I went in about a car in the early summer that was "in transit." Which apparently meant it was scheduled and allocated but not actually built yet. Got it in 1.5 months which was probably pretty good. And I got it for MSRP and even got $1K added to my trade-in which was already pretty good considering.

In the past year you probably weren't getting any build to order vehicle with a reasonable delivery time. They'd probably take your deposit but you might wait a year.

If you're American it's probably illegal for the manufacturer to sell to you directly.

Car salesmen are the most despised people in America. Even more so than lawyers and proctologists. Economically speaking, they are rent seeking leaches that suck out productivity from the economy. Only reason the car dealership exists is because these people made it illegal for the manufacturer to sell to the consumer

What's wrong with proctologists? That's like hating oncologists. Sure, no one actually wants to get cancer, but when you do, an oncologist is necessary and can save your life. The oncologist didn't cause you to get cancer, and the proctologist didn't cause you to have bowel problems.

A bit off-topic, but why are proctologists despised in America? I can understand it's not an encounter you're looking forward to, but why put them in the same category as care salesmen and lawyers? Are they known for using shady tactics, being extremely expensive or untrustworthy, or something else?

It is actually an (older) figure of speech/idiom. Nobody actually has problems with proctologists.

Car salesmen are the lowest of the low for sure.

But what people don't talk about much is how recruiters and real estate agents belong on the same list.