My hot take is auto dealers are a notoriously painful enterprise sales cycle due to network effects aka "good 'ol boys" club (anecdotally from folks in tech who have to deal in this industry).
Many are also not tech-savvy. Many dealerships are inherited within a family that has owned them since the 1950s if not longer. They are cash cows for the owners and there's little motivation to try new things. When they are forced to, like when internet sales and marketing became a thing they had to deal with, they just go with the same system that all their fellow dealers are using.
There also isn't space to grow. It's not like running a dealership with hyper efficiency is going to lead to being able to open another dealership. The market is largely saturated and in the rare event that an existing dealership comes for sale, you'll be competing with massive PE-backed conglomerates that can pay nonsense prices for them.
It's still very much a dinosaur industry. I suspect the names (i.e. Tony Jone's Toyota) in dealerships and dealership gorups are typically 70+ years or older by now. Children might be taking over and running things now but dad is still likely "chairman of the board" and makes final expense decisions.
Maybe 30 years ago. That's not the case with big dealer groups or young small independents.
Japanese-origin management for US Nissan dealers?
can confirm. also the high cost entailed to retrain folks from one system to a newer one.