Why Buying a Car Feels Like a Trap (And How It Got That Way)

My mom's Infiniti JX35 taught me how to drive, and I still remember the day she finally traded it in, not because of the car, but because of what happened at the dealership. She spent two hours getting talked over and talked down to, steered toward a Mercedes she'd never asked for. When it came time to value her trade, the salesman waved it off with some line about the import market and lowballed her hard. She didn't have a number to prove him wrong, but she knew garbage when she heard it.

As a 16-year-old, I was much too concerned with video games and school to fully register every component at play. But, years later, that experience has shaped my professional life and begs a pressing question:

Why does buying a car, something almost everyone in the U.S. does, feel like you're walking into a trap?

Nobody walks in relaxed

Every buyer I know describes some version of the same low-grade dread before they even reach the lot, like they already know the next couple of hours are going to cost them something beyond money. Friends get hit with fees that appear out of nowhere. Family members get talked down to. Nobody calls it easy!

That instinct isn't paranoia. Gallup's annual honesty-in-professions poll puts car salespeople at or near the bottom, year after year, below Congress!

I run a car consulting business built to stand between buyers and that process. Even with years of negotiation and analysis behind me, I'm still floored by how broken the process is, not just inefficient, but predatory and opaque. I've watched capable, accomplished people walk in and get outmaneuvered anyway. Being good at your job, or successful in your own field, buys you nothing at that desk. The system isn't built to notice. It's personal to me because I've made it my job to be the fix!

How did buying a car get so messed up?

Car buying didn't start this sketchy. At first, people bought directly from carmakers. Over time, dealerships became middlemen, and poorly written state franchise laws locked them into place: laws originally meant to help manufacturers cover a big country, now used mostly to protect dealer profits from any real competition. Consumer advocate Gregg Fidan calls the result what it is, "a protection racket" that "keeps consumers locked into outdated, dealer-first systems." Even the online guys don't get you out of it. Carvana, TrueCar, and CarsDirect all ultimately just "pass your information to a dealer who will contact you." Every road still leads back to the same building!

Car buying isn't just a customer experience problem, it's a structural and political one. The system, designed to expand access, has slowly turned into a way to control the entire process on their terms, not ours.

The showroom that proved it doesn't have to be this way

Not long after, my mom test-drove a Tesla, mostly at my suggestion. There's no dealership there, just a showroom: you drive it, you like it, you buy it online. No negotiation, no manager, no waiting to hear what somebody's boss will approve. She's driven that car for five years now and still loves it. I've told the full story of that day elsewhere on this site. The short version is that the same woman got two completely different experiences depending on which building she walked into.

So what do we do about it?

None of this is about one bad salesman having a bad day. It's a system built on imbalance: information tilted one way, incentives that don't line up with the buyer's interest, and some buyers, women and first-timers chief among them, worse off before they even sit down. Most people already know the system is broken. The harder part is understanding the roots of that brokenness, and the layers of cultural, economic, and political forces that reinforce it.

The short-term solution is clear: empower the buyer and balance the fight. That's me, the buyer's bodyguard. It doesn't matter whether the number on the table is eight thousand dollars or four hundred thousand: the dynamic is the same, and so is what you actually stand to lose. For a lot of my clients, money was never the tightest constraint. It's the time, the hours in a chair that don't come back, spent being managed by someone whose whole job is making sure you don't notice you're being managed.

But what about a long-term solution? What would it look like to buy a car in a system designed for fairness? Could we imagine an industry where transparency isn't a selling point but the default? Where salespeople are advocates, not adversaries? Where regulation defends consumers instead of shielding profit structures?

We've seen other industries evolve. Travel agencies used to dominate flight booking, adding mystery fees and gatekeeping information. Then came Expedia, Kayak, and direct airline apps, platforms built around transparency, self-service, and trust. The shift wasn't technological; it was philosophical. It treated the customer like someone capable, not clueless. If the airline industry can evolve, so too can car buying!

Until then, let's talk

Most people I work with start with nothing more than a short conversation about what they're actually trying to buy, and why the process already has them dreading it. I'm not a broker, a dealer, or a salesperson. I'm the counterweight in that fight. If that's what you're looking for, you'll find me at blewettcarconsultant.com!

Collin Blewett