Yeah, that's my least favorite part of how buying new cars works. The dealerships have cars on the lot with various semi-arbitrary combinations of options, and if you want some other combination then the process of buying a car gets more complicated and expensive.
Well, it's not like that just happens. It's a deliberate strategy to enable price discrimination. Calling it "semi-arbitrary" makes it sound like it isn't carefully planned. The whole game is to get everyone to buy either a budget or a luxury model and avoid selling a middle-of-the-road product for a fair price.
I have read so many times where car enthusiasts complain that they can't get the options they want with a manual transmission. Well, it's perfectly logical - when one aspect of a product is the deciding factor for a subgroup of customers, and the seller knows it, it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else. It's nothing personal, just optimization of the business.
> I have read so many times where car enthusiasts complain that they can't get the options they want with a manual transmission. Well, it's perfectly logical - when one aspect of a product is the deciding factor for a subgroup of customers, and the seller knows it, it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else. It's nothing personal, just optimization of the business.
I do actually think this is a special case. most people in america can't drive stick and don't want to learn either. for most cars that still have manual as an option, it saves you $800-1200 on the base trim of the car. so I imagine there's a weird bimodal distribution where one group of people wants manual just because it's the cheapest version of the car, while you also have enthusiasts who are willing to purchase a lot of the options (at least the performance related ones). either way, cars with manual transmissions are a fairly low volume market in the US. they can be pretty hard to move.
Oddly, I hear more groaning about not being able to buy manuals every day here. It sees more of a metro vs rural thing. Metro folk only want autos because traffic, and rural folk like the control, and feel of manuals more on smaller roads. Living near mountains manuals are hugely popular as they allow much safer driving by engine braking, while many will overheat their brakes.
Other than a few fleet style trucks, most manual options in the usa are performance models.
...it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else.
I doubt that, the margin on the luxury options has got to be higher than on the base model.
It's probably more that they don't want to be stuck with a car on the lot that has a manual transmission and all the other luxury options maxed out, that they end up having to sell at a substantial discount to move (because most of their customers, particularly the ones willing to spend on the luxury options, want an auto box).
What I doubt is that, considered in isolation, the sale of a manual car with all budget options is more profitable than the sale of the same manual car with additional luxury options. Sorry if that is a misinterpretation of your comment.
Autogefühl [1] is a great YouTube channel for finding out if a new car is available with non-leather seats.
They also made an interesting video a few days ago [2] saying the leather industry is trying to pay YouTuber's to recommend leather seats in their car reviews.
There's a surplus of dead cows floating around. Gotta do something with those hides, what better than make it a 'premium' product in the auto/furniture industry.
Seriously. I have gone so far as to get junkyard seats from a 'lesser' trim to upgrade the leather seats in used cars. When new they are okay, but seem to last 4-6 years before looking hopelessly worn thanks to the cheap quality used even in luxury cars nowdays. Gone are the days of full-grain that patina'ed instead of disintergrating.
What do you find complicated and expensive about custom ordering a car? Most dealerships are totally willing to order whatever you want. You get exactly what you want at the price you want. (Within the limitations of the options)
When I went to buy my first car, years ago, I opened the shiny brochure and asked "Can I get X with Y and maybe Z?", and was told flat out "No, we don't sell option X at all." Just because they advertise it doesn't mean you can buy it.
