1998 marked two significant milestones in my son’s life. At just ten years of age, Zachary Ziegler had to face the revelations that Santa Claus is not real and that Professional Wrestling is fake...He’s still really mad about wrestling.

Then on January 4^th, WCW (World Championship Wrestling) Monday Nitro was held at the Georgia Dome. We didn’t invite my wife, after all this is a "Man Thing". The moment we entered the Dome I realized that I was wading in the shallow end of the gene pool. There I was, hand-in-hand with my ten year-old, shoulder to shoulder with 25,000 people who had less than 100,000 teeth collectively. Of course, I blended right in because I was wearing my black "Goldberg" tee shirt and jeans.

The main event, it was Kevin Nash against Hollywood Hulk Hogan (an unspeakable villain). The crowd booed as Hogan regained the title, and then Goldberg jumped into the ring. Are you following this? ...Good.! Then, all of the bad guys ambushed Goldberg and it looked as if he was a goner. Then...Then Lex Lugar came running and jumped into the ring. At last, a good guy showed up to help Goldberg. BUT, Lugar actually snuck up behind Goldberg and proceeded to put him into his signature hold. 

"My God...Say it Ain’t So...not Lex." My little boy just had another major setback...Lex Lugar is now a bad guy.

In the last fifteen years, I have stood in more than a thousand showrooms and I have interacted with many thousand dealers, managers and factory

executives. The one thing I am seeing and hearing, over and over again when I talk to the dealers is when they shake their heads and say in a very sad, low voice... "It’s Just Not Fun Any More."

Well, like Lex Lugar, I can remember when the factory executives were the good guys. I recently even received a letter from a Ford Dealer in Texas that referred to "Benedict Ross Roberts".

As the battle intensifies, there is a concentrated effort by Ford and General Motors to defeat state franchise laws and open up the door for factory ownership.

Pure and simple, I believe that these factories are through with you. That they no longer want the individual, entrepreneurial dealer and they are surgically chipping away at all of your legal protection. Putting the state dealer associations under pressure to draft legislative initiatives to soften tough "Dealer-Friendly" franchise laws.

Ross Roberts, on behalf of the Ford FRN’s has been lobbying hard in Texas to the point where the traditionally tough, Texas Auto dealers Association is meeting to consider taking an initiative to the Texas state legislature to allow Ford to operate dealerships in Dallas-Fort Worth. Ford promises that the FRN Dealerships will not get preferential treatment. Of course, I have to examine Ford Motor Company’s recent track record for keeping their promises to their dealers. Did the buzzer just go off?

Am I imagining it or did Ford promise, just two years ago, that they would not go into any market where all of the dealers did not come on board?

I betcha Ross had his fingers crossed on that one, huh?

Originally, The Ford Retail Network, or whatever they were calling it then, was just going to be a tiny experiment, maybe in Indianapolis...just to see if it worked. That was the original propaganda we were fed by Ford before they went blitzkreiging across the country buying stores. In my opinion, the biggest double-cross since Hitler invaded Poland.

The most ludicrous examples are the Rochester FRN and the Oklahoma City FRN. In both cases dealers held out and Ford proceeded anyway.

Now, General Motors makes an end run around the spirit of the law in Florida (perhaps the toughest franchise laws in the country) by installing Roland Daniels, a minority dealer, as the dealer, operator, of seven factory-owned Saturn Dealerships. Of course the technicality was some vague wording...a loophole perhaps...in the otherwise tough language of the law. The Florida law reads that a dealer must make a significant investment in a dealership. Of course Roland’s investment was somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000. That is certainly not the 15% investment General Motors normally requires of a minority partner. AND...here’s the real story...unless I am misreading Daniel’s dealer agreement (which is more than 70 pages), General Motors can walk in two years from now and repossess the stores by buying him out...and...it doesn’t appear he would have any choice in the matter. In other words, is the factory betting that the Florida franchise laws will fall in two years or so and they can walk in and take over in the sunshine?

I am not saying Mr. Daniels is a "Straw Man" or a front for the factory under the guise of the minority program. All I am saying is that there is an old adage in the Car Business that says... "If you see a turtle on the top of a fence post, chances are that someone stuck him up there."

Let’s get into the hot rumor department for a moment. What if...Just what if, at least one senior Vice-president with Ford Motor Company has already lined up a plum executive position with Republic Industries...a golden parachute so-to-speak. If that was the truth, then what would that vice-president have given up to Republic Industries to deserve that plum job after he retires? It’s as obvious to me as a very dumb blond wearing very expensive jewelry.

Maybe...just maybe...there’s an inside double-cross somewhere in the woodwork. Is the Ford Legacy being sold out, from within?

You may have noticed that I have really been rather light when criticizing Daimler-Chrysler. I have to say that I admire Eaton’s public statement that they have elected to support the entreneurial efforts of their individual dealers.

You know I believe that. First of all, Chrysler hasn’t tampered with the margins on their automobiles like General Motors and Ford. They still allow their dealers a fair and honest markup. I contribute a lot of Daimler-Chrysler’s success to that philosophy alone.

Secondly, they are not sucking up to the public companies like the other two appear to be. Early on they did step over to the dark side and made some stupid concessions to CarMax that they shouldn’t have BUT they quickly learned their lesson and they appear to have repented for that.