It’s been a long time since I was in Europe but I had noticed in France they had showrooms and no car lots. I could not figure that out at the time.
Her article explains a great deal to me.
My last 3 cars have been bought online with the requirements I wanted. I still had to go to the dealer to pick it up.
It would be a nice option if the Manufactures left Americans buy direct but that is an unheard of in this Country.
I ordered my last car to spec from Audi via the local dealership. It was reasonably painless. It took about 4 months to show up. Probably longer today.
5-6 years ago we did a Rhine river cruise, and one of the excursions I did was of the Mercedes GLA plant at Rastatt. It was quite an impressive facility, and besides the museum and plant tour we did, there was a large facilty where tons of Europeans were taking delivery of their new cars right at the factory.
There is actually a lobbyist-driven law that forbids people from going around the dealer.
Volkswagen got in trouble with that abotu 25 years ago with a special online-edition of the Beetle. The government put a stop to that.
It was offered in a specific online only color too. I think the US managed to see about 100 of them.