How The Dealer treats us...was Start of a silly season

[Michael McLaughlin]

I keep thinking the current economic whatever-you-want-to-call-it  
could have an effect on how premium car brands do business. For years  
they've tended to cater to the leasing customer, which made sense  
because they were leasing a ton of cars. A person who gets a new Audi  
(or BMW, or Mercedes-Benz, or whatever) every three years and never  
has to have any work done to it except for (infrequent) oil changes  
is going to be very happy. Now that leasing seems to be declining in  
popularity, perhaps they'll actually care about keeping customers  
after the warranty runs out. But I'm not holding my breath.