The Middleman’s Last Stand: Inside The Car Dealer Campaign Against Direct-To-Consumer Car Sales

Opinion: Why the automotive retail experience is broken and how car dealer aligned media is fighting the wrong war.

We have all been there, that moment in almost every new car purchase when the buyer realizes the deal they thought they were making is not the deal they are actually being offered. It usually happens after the test drive. Sometimes after the handshake. Often in a small office with frosted glass and a laser printer that never seems to stop.

The price changes. The tone shifts. Time stretches. For decades, this was simply called buying a car. Today, it is increasingly called something else… a problem.

It happened to me, to friends, to family, in fact just this month I reached out to a dealer about a new vehicle and the frustration and runaround started before I even stepped foot on the lot. It wasn’t the customer service experience anyone who is being asked to pay $50,000+ for a product should expect, but sadly in as my general manager used to tell me when I was a young car salesman, “There is Business, and then there is The Car Business.”

But recently my social media feeds have been flooded with news network interviews of car dealers. The network, CBT News, started showing up on TikTok, Instagram, and even Facebook. CBT stands for Car Biz Today, it is a trade publication for car dealers, but the social media campaign is very focused on one narrative, that Franchise Car Dealership are the only protection consumers have from big automotive companies.

The Car Dealer Problem No One Wants To Fix

Ask consumers what they dislike about buying a car and they will not start with horsepower or monthly payments. They will talk about process at the car dealer. Waiting. Repeating themselves. Watching numbers move without explanation. Being told an add on is mandatory only to learn later that it never was. The dreaded four square where the math doesn’t add up.

Research from Cox Automotive consistently shows that the most stressful parts of the purchase happen inside the dealership, not online. Financing. Trade in valuation. Finalizing terms. Time spent waiting for approvals. The average buyer now spends more than half a day navigating the modern car buying journey, bouncing between manufacturer website offers, dealer websites, and in store rituals that do not always agree with one another. Manufacturers spend millions of dollars on marketing special incentives, lease programs, and other offers, but dealers often won’t honor those promotions even if they have the vehicle on the lot. The stories we all hear about car buying would almost feel apocryphal, if we hadn’t experienced them ourselves multiple times.

The Federal Trade Commission has noticed too. Its warnings about junk fees, unwanted add ons, and deceptive practices read less like abstract policy and more like a checklist of common dealership complaints. The FTC’s attempted CARS Rule was a direct response to what regulators believe has become a pattern rather than an exception.

None of this is news to anyone who has ever worked inside a car dealer.

Former salespeople know the rhythms. The pacing. The way time can be used as leverage. The way confusion creates opportunity. When even insiders leave the car dealer feeling worn down, it is a signal that the system is not merely misunderstood. It is misaligned and it is bad for consumers and dealerships.

How Direct To Consumer Reset Car Dealer Expectations

Then Tesla happened.

Not because Tesla made perfect cars. It did not. Not because it always offered the best prices. It did not. Tesla changed the market by doing something far more disruptive. It treated buying a car like buying any other product. The price was the price. The process was predictable. There was no incentive to change the deal halfway through the transaction. For better or worse, the experience was consistent.

Carvana did this with the used car market, just find the car online, the price is set, complete all your paperwork on your phone from the comfort of your own home and a few days later the car is in your drive way. I know three years ago we walked out of a local dealer after the third round of fantasy four square while trying to lease a new car, and instead ordered my wife’s slightly used Mercedes-Benz on Carvana that afternoon.

That consistency rewired consumer expectations. Buyers who had grown accustomed to friction suddenly saw an alternative that did not require endurance training. Even people who never intended to buy a Tesla or from Carvana absorbed the lesson. Car buying did not have to feel like a battle.

That lesson is what truly threatens the traditional car dealer model, not the existence of a checkout button.

Enter CBT News

As consumer frustration grew, a different kind of media outlet was also gaining influence.

CBT News began life in 2012 as a video driven platform aimed squarely at franchised dealers. It was designed as a forum for car dealer voices, dealer strategies, and dealer success stories. Its audience was never the general public. It was the industry sharing insights and news. After spending some time on the site much of it feels like sponsored content from auto sales trainers, software companies, and other companies that serve the retail car dealer. Launching after I had already left retail automotive sales, I had never heard of the platform until it started flooding my social media feed these last few weeks.

There is nothing inherently wrong with trade media. Every industry has it. The problem arises when advocacy begins wearing the costume of consumer protection and this recent campaign against Scout, in my opinion feels more like propaganda than news.

Looking at their story archive it is clear that in recent years, CBT News has sharpened its tone, particularly on the subject of direct to consumer sales. Its programming and short form content, including aggressive use of social platforms, has increasingly framed direct sales as a threat to buyers themselves. The message is simple and repeated often. Without dealers, consumers are at risk.

This framing aligns closely with the public stance of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which has openly opposed direct to consumer sales models and pledged to fight them in legislatures and courtrooms across the country.

The most visible recent target of the NADA has been Scout Motors, Volkswagen’s new EV brand that intends to sell vehicles directly to buyers. Scout has positioned its approach around transparency, simplicity, and speed. In response, dealer groups have framed the move as anti consumer and anti competition.

CBT News coverage of the issue follows a familiar pattern. Interviews with dealer principals and association leaders. Questions that invite concern rather than challenge. Segments that emphasize the risks of cutting out the middleman while rarely interrogating why consumers are so eager to abandoned their local retailer.

Missing are meaningful counter voices. Consumer advocates. Antitrust scholars. Buyers who have lived through both systems. Former dealers who understand the economics but no longer believe the model serves its original purpose. Instead of introspection on how dealerships can improve the consumer experience, CBT News serves up softball questions that give the dealer the chance to say that the existing structure is not just preferable, but necessary for the protection of the automotive consumer.

Car Dealer: Protection Versus Friction

The franchise car dealer system does provide real benefits. Local service infrastructure matters. Warranty work matters. Having a physical place to resolve disputes matters. But for manufacturers who are chasing brand loyalty, dealers are also a lability. The latest J.D. Power U.S. Automotive Brand Loyalty Study finds that overall loyalty, measured by whether buyers choose the same brand when buying their next new vehicle, is below 50 percent across all segments, meaning roughly half of buyers switch brands when they make a new purchase.

But consumers do not experience the modern dealership primarily as protection. They experience it as friction. A trend report from Deloitte’s 2025 Global Automotive Consumer Study finds that more than half of U.S. respondents plan to switch brands for their next vehicle purchase, and that decisions increasingly rest on value and experience throughout the buying journey, not just product quality or incentives. This suggests consumers are willing to trade brands when their expectations aren’t met, including expectations around how the purchase process feels.

When car dealer aligned media insists the system exists for the buyer’s benefit, it collides with lived reality of consumers. Buyers remember the add ons they could not remove. The finance products sold with fear instead of clarity. The hours lost to a process that seemed designed to wear them down. I’ve experienced it myself, and it’s maddening.

This is the credibility gap.

Consumers are not asking for the elimination of dealers. They are asking for transparency. Consistency. Respect for their time. They are asking not to feel played.

The tragedy for the industry is that many dealers already know how to deliver this. Stores that post real prices, eliminate forced add ons, compress transaction times, and treat financing as optional rather than punitive often perform well. The market rewards them.

Defending The Structure Instead of Fixing The Experience

Faced with pressure from direct sales, car dealer groups have chosen a familiar response. Protect the structure. Control the narrative. Emphasize risk. Fight change in congress, courtrooms, and comment sections rather than showrooms.

CBT News has become a key amplifier of this approach, not because it is malicious, but because it is structurally aligned with the interests it serves. Its advertisers, access, and audience all depend on the health of the franchised dealer ecosystem. The result is a media campaign that treats direct to consumer sales as a moral hazard instead of a market signal.

The Future Of Car Sales

This story does not end with the extinction of car dealers. It ends with a fork in the road. One path leads deeper into narrative warfare, where dealers, trad associations, and trade media insists the problem is perception and disruption is the enemy. The other leads toward reform, where dealers compete on experience rather than leveraging fear and spending millions on political lobbying.

Direct to consumer brands are not winning because they are radical. They are winning because they are boring in the best possible way. The dealerships can keep telling buyers they need protection from the manufacturers of the products they sell. Or it can start giving them what they actually want, great customer service, transparent pricing, and a reason to want to come back.