Googling for statistics about the profitability of rural car ownership seems to be a fruitless task, so I can only speak from the anecdotal experience of one who has spent most of their life 1. living in rural areas and 2. has worked for and started businesses providing services to rural car dealers with the son of a big-shot sales manager for multiple dealers. (Alarms/physical security and web services/social media bullshit, respectively.)

Every car dealership I worked with had obscene profit margins (primarily from service), dealerships routinely collaborated with each other (a handful of old men owned most of the major dealerships for hundreds of miles and went to lunch together regularly), and all had nothing short of abusive business practices. Most of the owners had started out as salesmen and eventually worked up enough money to get a dealership of their own, at which point they rapidly expanded to multiple dealerships (which would imply a well above average rate of return on investment.)

Thankfully the 2008 crash gutted a lot of them. Hopefully tesla and the manufacturers can deliver a killing (legal) blow - without government-enforced monopoly status, they'll die quickly because they really don't really add any value to the consumer and cost tons of money.

Sorry for the rant, the entire subject is infuriating.