You go to a dealership to buy a vehicle

The dealership quote you a price.

You agree to pay that price.

You pay a deposit.

The vehicle arrives at the dealership.

You go to the dealership to pay the price that was quoted and agreed upon.

you drive the vehicle away.

The above scenario is what a fair/ethical/proper car purchase process is supposed to be.
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There is no discount involved.

The fact that some dealerships marking up the MSRP should not be used as a reference/standard to how we should be treated as a customer.

In other words, just because a dealership operates properly (ethically and professionally) does not make your experience fortunate or exceptional. It makes your experience decent and good because the dealership provides what's expected.

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I guess I was looking at it differently. It was many months before the dealership got an allotment for my build and the dealership cost from the factory was actually higher than it had been at the time of order. The sales contract listed the price as the prevailing MSRP price and had a line for a $4,100 "rebate" which got the price down to what was quoted earlier. There happened to be a fairly animated conversation between the finance guy, the sales guy and the manager. Apparently, the finance guy wanted to sell the truck at the current MSRP to maintain margins. My understanding is the manager agreed to reduce his margins.

 

You paid a deposit to order a vehicle, didn't you?

If so, then dealership's cost of your order remained the same regardless the fact that their cost increased later for the later built/allotted inventory.

JLR didn't jack up the amount that the dealership had to pay for your built. They paid what was the dealership's cost based on the time of the order submitted.

Therefore, once again, the dealership did not give you any discount and they didn't absorb any additional cost and receive less profit.

What the finance people wanted to do is to take advantage of the situation and tried to add additional profit by conducting themselves unethically and sneakily.

Now if you didn't order the vehicle but instead you put a deposit down to buy one on their lot but you never actually carry out the transaction at the time. Then 6 months or so later, you showed up again and wanted to buy the vehicle. By then , the MSRP had already gone up but they decided to give you the old MSRP 6 months or so ago, in that case, that would be somewhat of a discount.

 

I’m also not a lawyer ….

seems to me they are trying to make you think that because they have possession of the title that it means something. In reality, it’s your name on the title and worst case you can go pick up a new one. Unless you sign the title over to them, possession doesn’t mean anything.

 

this might have to do with Capital One recently pulling out of flooring lines of credit.

once a dealer changes title they have the pay back the flooring line loan. this all happened ed end of March.

Without a flooring line creditor in place the dealer would have to use theme own funds to purchase new vehicles.

i am seeing this with used car dealerships. they are not changing title hoping they don’t have to pay back yet till they find a new creditor

 

According to what I read, few car markers penalized their dealerships for violating the non-export policy.

So perhaps instead of asking the customers to sign the non-export agreement that the vehicle was purchased for use in the north America region and that it's not going to be exported by the customer or another parties through reselling, they asked the customers to let the dealership to hold the title for one year in order to absolutely prevent any export.

Because just someone signed an agreement doesn't mean they won't do it anyway, and the dealership might still get tangled up with the penalty and such.

I personally would never let the dealership to hold the title after I pay for the vehicle in full.

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yes what does “hold the title” mean? That they keep a copy of the document? If so just order a new copy of the title document.

If it means the title is in their name, as owner of the car then something is not right.