[jaredhansen]

This might be right, but I'm not so sure. Public perception is that dealerships are adverse to customers because of information asymmetry + price haggling, and that online sales will hurt them -- but in many conversations with multiple different car industry insiders, they all say that dealers make almost no money car sales, and instead make almost all of it on financing, service and parts. That you can almost model the car dealing parts of a dealership as lead gen for the service desk / finance desk.

I don't know if that's right (anybody with more info care to comment?), but it's at least enough to give me pause on the "dealers will hate nonnegotiable pricing" claim.

[bluGill]

You are missing used car sales. Most people who buy a new car trade in their old car and the dealer makes a killing on that. (when the car is leased that almost always amounts to a trade in from the dealer's perspective, though once in a while the lease company will sell the car in some way other than the dealer).

You are correct that there is no real money in new car sales anymore.