I guess my flippant answer is "Yes." My less flippant answer is that autos are one of the few personal purchases that US consumers usually have to negotiate a price for. (Of course, many people regularly negotiate as part of their jobs.)

"Should" car purchases be negotiations? Well, they aren't at all dealers or with all brands but it's the way things have evolved in the US generally. I don't consider it right or wrong in some general sense; it's just the way things are. And there are other options for those who choose not to negotiate although they probably won't be quite as good a deal as an aggressively negotiated and shopped around for purchase.

> "Should" car purchases be negotiations? Well, they aren't at all dealers or with all brands but it's the way things have evolved in the US generally. I don't consider it right or wrong in some general sense; it's just the way things are.

Not for too much longer.

Is there really a general trend for new cars to be purchased at a non-negotiable price, with standard non-negotiable financing, and with trade-in independent of the new car purchase? I can point to some examples (including but not limited to Tesla) where at least a "no haggle" price is the case but it doesn't seem particularly common. One thing is that, while a lot of people claim to dislike negotiating, those same people want to get a real or perceived "good deal."

There is not such a trend, for new cars. Remember that new cars are mostly sold by dealers who have exclusive territories. That gives dealers the freedom to pick a business model that maximizes dealer profits.

I agree with the principles of what you are saying; but practically speaking: where does one draws the line? How does that differs from everyday --most often misleading and pretty much fake-- Advertisement? How about mortgage? Surely that is nothing more than ripping off the poor.

In the US, people don't really haggle every day. It's not part of the culture. This stands in stark contrast to the experience of buying a car, which is something people are never going to do frequently enough to build up haggling skills. So it's really context dependent.

In a culture where people haggle constantly (or at least more frequently), then a larger portion of people will have the relevant skill set to navigate these waters. I guess you could "solve" it by building haggling into the culture, but you could also "solve" it by forcing car dealerships to normalize with the way that most other average purchases work.

Don't know much about mortgage, but advertising is clearly a legalized and glorified antisocial behaviour. Somehow lying and tricking people into parting with their money is a respactable occupation nowadays.

Both of those examples are objectively awful things, used by desperate people to attain control over others.