Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
In the United States there used to be separate car dealers for each brand of auto, even in small cities. If a dealer wanted to "move up" from a smaller brand to a larger one (like American Motors to Chevrolet), he would be required to sell his old dealership (at least on paper). It was considered a conflict of interest by the auto manufacturers for dealers to sell their competitor's cars. Sometime (I think in the '80s) this changed.
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Late 70's, IIRC; the gas crunch drove a lot of people to foreign (i.e., japanese) cars big time so a lot of dealers had to go hybrid, one part Detroit, one part japanese or european. After a while the bigger dealers opened multiple operations in different parts of town, selling a brand or two in one area and a different one elsewhere. By the 90's some of the bigger operations ran triple brands and the biggest had big exurban lots with maybe a dozen brands from all over.
Lots of brands have died since those days.