One of the problems in the U.S. is the power of the dealers. Historically, the auto dealers were one of the "pillars of the community" supporting lots of local civic things. This led to them having lots of influence on the individual state legislators. As a result, lots of the states have very restrictive laws as to the conditions under which an auto manufacturer can pull a dealer's franchise. The U.S. car manufactures have been trying to cut the number of dealers for the past 20 years or so, but these restrictive laws have been in the way, often resulting in the manufacturers paying large sums of money to the existing dealers just so they can close their dealership. Because of this, the auto manufacturers have limited ability to bring bad dealers in-line with corporate policy and desires.

As an example of the dealer's historic political power, many U.S. States have laws prohibiting car dealers from being open for business on Sunday -- the dealers essentially got together and figured that if they all closed on Sunday they would all still sell the same amount of cars, but they wouldn't have to have their salespeople work on Sunday.