“The check clears” is a euphemism in this case, as exporters invariably pay cash.

Yes.

The phrasing is a bit inside baseball, as exporting refers to out of country. A dealer isn’t going to care what domestic tax dodge you’re up to as long as the documentation you provide at the time of sale checks out.

“Illegal” isn’t the term. The term is “violation of franchise agreement”.

I doubt the dealer cares about taxes, because those are a pass-through and any tax implications would be on the buyer. And without knowing the state the dealer is in, we can’t say that registering the out-of-state vehicle is really a problem. The simplest explanation - that they’re worried about exporters - is the…

IMHO “switched residency” is a red flag, as is wondering aloud about discrimination. If you moved to Montana, you say you moved to Montana. If he ordered a vehicle and the dealer won’t sell it because of this “switched residency”, get the ordered vehicle transferred to a dealer who will.

The exporter thing is the issue. I don’t think a dealer will care about the tax issue as long as the check clears.

If you’re talking about the Mercedes dealer not selling to people in Montana, this is a different situation. Dealers are deathly afraid of selling to exporters because the manufacturers will drop the hammer on them if they do.

Exactly. I can’t speak for Mercedes, but I worked at a dealer group with a Porsche store, and Porsche is absolutely militant when it comes to exporters, and we had to do checks on buyers and turn down business because a buyer came up on their exporter list. Selling to an exporter could lead to sanctions by the…

I don’t think we’re disagreeing as much as you think we are.

I’m not forgetting anything. What has happened is, free-flowing tobacco money drove up costs, and now that that money is gone, teams need to cut costs to be more in line with what sponsors are willing to pay. Essentially NASCAR is going through what IndyCar did in the late 90s.

These are not the only options, so you’ll excuse me if I skip the Sophie’s Choice.

Free enterprise/capitalism have very little to do with the running of a race team. I mean, free enterprise/capitalism provide the money to run a race team, but the teams itself? Not so much.

Some people would argue yes. I’m not making that argument, or any argument for that matter. My original comment was to explain the motives of the people putting out these rumors.

There seems to be this line of thought that there won’t be a net loss of jobs, and that people in these shops just need to update their skills. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of one of main reasons why this new car is being created.

It is virtually impossible to find specific comments to reply to, so I’ll put this here...

Because the readers on this site probably haven’t heard of these engines, let alone drive them. I’m convinced that a lot here haven’t actually driven many - if any - vehicles. IRL at least.

There is no filter for these lists because they’re only about the clicks. Everyone gets a participation trophy.

Umm... no.

I’ve had many variations on the 3800 over the years, and while they’re not perfect, they got them pretty close by the end. I’m waiting for the timing and weather to be right to do plugs in my sister’s ‘04 LeSabre, because you have to either lay on the engine or get up underneath to get to the back ones. It needs an…