You know, the really troubling thing about this whole thread is that here, Dodge dealers had a man who very much wanted to buy one of their products. Although their competitors are offering a similar product (yeah, yeah, I know there are LOTS of differences between a Challenger and a Vette, but at the end of the day, they are both sports cars) at a reduced price, those Dodge dealers would rather LOSE A CUSTOMER than give up 1 cent of profit.
It's like several weeks ago, I stopped into San Antonio's North Star Dodge to check out their Challengers (they had four 08 SRTs and one 09 SE). They wanted an extra $6K for the SE (I have no idea how much extra they wanted for the SRTs). I offered MSRP for the SE on the spot (I even had my checkbook with me and could have done it, all $24K at once). No deal. The lowest they would go was "maybe" $3K over. Now everybody here knows that in real life, NOBODY even pays MSRP for a car, unless they are a total fool or the car is EXTREMELY popular. There is lots of profit for dealers in MSRP alone, yet those bozos wanted to hold people up for even more than that. Naturally, I declined their unkind offer, since I already had an SE on order.
Yesterday, out of curiosity, I searched the local Dodge dealers' inventory and saw where North Star Dodge still has all four of its SRTs, the SE that I saw and another SE. I wonder how many folks like Old Goat have stopped in there, saw that they were going to be fleeced and went on their merry way and bought a car somewhere else. Now, those cars are just sitting on the North Star lot.
You would think that as bad as the economy is (look at the monthly stats on car sales) and how shaky the situation at Chrysler is, that Dodge dealers everywhere would be trying to sell as many Challengers as they possibly could since it is THEIR ONLY POPULAR CAR. Even at a grand or two under MSRP, they are STILL GOING TO MAKE MONEY and possibly make a customer for life. If anything kills off Chrysler, it is going to be the greed factor that drives away customers.
Edit: I showed this to my wife and she pointed out that at the time we were there, North Star had FIVE SRTs listed online. She is right, so they have sold ONE in four or five weeks. We only saw three of the cars, though: Two blacks and an orange. The unseen ones were silver. Either the silver ones were going so fast that we could not see them or they were in the shop being worked on because someone did too many burnouts with them.
