American Cars III: What about the dealers?

Mac Tonite left an interesting comment on an earlier post about American Cars, and brings up shady dealer practices. He uses the example of Saab, pre- and post-GM, and finds the need for repairs increased once Saab repairs were moved over to the local Cadillac service center.

His suggestion seems to be that dealers representing the Big Three are snakes, while foreign car dealers have more integrity.

I am wondering if this negative perception of dealers ties into the quality perception of American cars discussed earlier -- that is, quality rankings for American cars are affected by excessive bogus repairs authorized by greedy dealers. The cars may not need the repairs, and the quality is actually good, but the dealers for the Big Three recommend them anyway to boost their profits.

Meanwhile, foreign car dealers restrain themselves, either because they have more integrity/less greed, or because customers are extremely sensitive to high priced foreign-made parts and the dealers don't want to scare them away.

Does this sound plausible? Any dealer stories that support/contradict this?

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