My friends who work at Ford all report a general feeling of being over the dealership. They’re just as sick of the dealer shenanigans as we consumers are and it sounds like they’re working hard on cutting them out. This didn’t have to be—but the dealers insisted on being scummy and not changing with the times and now they’re left friendless.

TBF there is a very slow moving pendulum. The manufacturers screwed the dealerships many decades ago, so the government passed laws to protect dealerships (see also: in some states you can't buy a Tesla at a Tesla showroom). The dealers in turn used those regulations as leverage against the manufacturers.

General speaking: in times of high-margins, manufacturers want to kill the dealerships to capture a larger slice of those margins. In times of low-margins (even negative net margins) the manufacturers want to force the dealerships to eat as much of the cost as possible.

Manufacturers having the capability to do this is a relatively recent development, though, historically speaking. Originally even the largest manufacturers couldn’t afford to build out the necessary sales and service infrastructure across the US without the independent dealers.

Ford recently announced that all new electric vehicles will be ordered direct and at MSRP.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a40175990/ford-online-sale...

Previously, some dealerships were offering “cut the line” fees to their Lightning reservations, and Ford called them out by saying that dealerships that do that will get less stock.

It’s about time OEMs fight back against dealerships.

> Also, what is the point of a dealership

Because the US has a law that prohibits direct sales and must be made through a dealership. Presumably some middle man bribed their way to creating that law

The US doesn’t have that late, some states do, and it was out on at a time where the thought was to protect the downtrodden dealers