[clyde]

Yeah.

Leaving the industry discussion aside for a moment and narrowing it to my situation:

They're the only dealer with a car I want to buy in within the range I'm willing to travel.

I don't want to do business with them.

I don't *need* the car today. Or next week.

I don't want to waste 4+ hours of my life pursuing a deal that I "knew" wasn't going to happen.

If I had confidence that I could buy the car from them at a price I'm happy with, I'd be willing to go visit.

My experience with the dealer thus far is that they are straight up old school sleaze. I read some Yelp reviews last night. Everything reinforced that impression.

That doesn't mean the right deal can't be had without some effort on my part...I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth making the effort.

My expectation is a trip to their store will be a minimum of four frustrated hours of my life I'll never get back and no car to show for it.

My second best guess is that I wind up buying the car at a price I'm not happy with, but can live with just to get it done, after a lot of time playing their games and fending off multiple attempts by them to stick their hands further down my pockets with an excruciatingly painful financing adventure. (A bunch of Yelp reviews describe what appears to be a concerted strategy to force buyers into using captive financing at sky high rates by refusing to provide buyers orders so purchasers can arrange outside financing.)

To be clear, if there were other immediate choices, I wouldn't even consider them. But they are literally the only game in town today...and probably will be for at least 6 and possibly as many as 12 more weeks based on what it looks like new production is coming.