100%, gotta be a car lobby thing. If dealerships provide an important service, then put it in the market's hands and let people decide if that service is worth paying for.

There are lots of reasons:

Naked corruption, be it financial or (more like since this is state level), nepotism.

When many of these laws were instituted, it was generally illegal for producers to own their own means of distribution. Movie studios couldn’t own movie theaters for example. That’s why streaming went from a small collection of collaborative entities with most things you’d want to watch, to four (or more) dozen, all price fixing and moving in unison just like the cell industry does.

Theoretically, tax money is more likely to remain in a state if a car dealership is local to that state. Ford selling vehicles in Georgia, for example, would almost surely send all their profits back to Michigan or whatever tax haven is cool these days (which wasn’t as much of a problem when these laws were made).

I’m not defending dealers, though. They are rent-seeking parasites that grossly underpay the people in the garage who keep things humming along. There is a very real dealership-owner (or children) to state politician pipeline in my state and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Car dealers are owned by wealthy owners. They have lobbied hard (i.e. $$$) to block other business models via state regulation capture.

Note that most of these laws exist in so called “pro business” red states. Allowing competition and newer, more efficient, business models to replace older business models is a basic tenant of capitalism.

Purely government in the pockets of the dealers.

Dump regulations to kill the free market

Historical legacy. It made sense when they were first rolling out. Someone would take the risk of trying to build up a market for these really expensive new devices and then the factory would swoop in and undercut them and destroy their business after they had done all the initial leg work of creating demand for the vehicles. They wanted protection from this.

Well, cars are now everywhere in the US market and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort anymore to convince someone they need a car, and not just a horse. But the laws protecting "car market development" in the former of dealerships never went away.

Basically to prevent one care company to put up stores everywhere and making a monopoly, also more tax.

I think the thing a lot of people don’t understand is that not all businesses want to deal with the public. Most don’t because they require customer service. That’s what the dealership offers.

Is this the case with vehicles? Not sure but it’s an aspect that often gets missed.

Outdated laws from the dawn of the car industry. Ford and GM were a lot smaller and definitely couldn’t afford to have a show room in every state and market that might be interested in cars. An industry of small businesses called car dealerships was born.

One worry was that an original mom and pop dealership in a particular area could build a brand, and create great business and awareness for a particular brand, only to have that brand open a direct sell show room after all the risks have been eliminated. They campaigned states/local governments to pass laws prohibiting direct selling or more commonly (I think) direct selling within some large radius of an existing dealership for the same manufacturer

I got a laugh out of that even though I think you're being serious, maybe just because it's so true. With the software and network integration of cars it's like they're becoming a platform to squeeze as much money as possible out of you. And like commercial software you can buy a car, but you sure as hell don't own it. The automaker is in control.

So yeah, fuck cars. And Tesla is spearheading that approach to automobile ownership so fuck Tesla too. If someone makes a car free of that evil network to maker shit, it's a buy for me.