I live in a city of about 210 thousand. 2 Chrysler dealers, one each Honda Toyota, Nissan, Mitsu, BMW, Benz, Mazda, 2 Chevy, one ford and our crown jewel, a GIANT FORD/CHEVY dealership. Yes you read that right, we have a culture of looking the other way on this sort of thing. Then there’s Subaru, which is a straight up criminal operation, no one knows how Subaru hasn’t yanked the franchise from them. Mazda and Subaru are independent but all the other ones are owned by the same 4 guys. Bad people, bad on the inside, the kind of guys who run their small town with an iron fist. Ford/Chevy dealer is independent from itself, as husband owns Ford and wife owns Chevy. Totally legit nice and legal.
We’re a net exporter of used cars as our lease returns and 3-5 year old used cars tend to be pristine and go to saltier parts of Canada where they fetch a premuim as a ‘western rust free car’. When there’s no market for that, they just sit in fields rotting as the’re kept of the market to artificially maintain scarcity. Car dealers are the scum of the earth, but ours are the kind that have ruled their little world for generations and are firmly entreched. Wanna go two towns over to get a good small town deal? Tough titty, Mr. Burns owns that one too.