U.S. Car Dealers Know the Way to a Man’s Heart Is With a Rifle

You’re not to take that literally. Still, there seems to be a growing number of car dealership managers who, regardless of the controversy they stir and the pushback they get, and despite the ever-larger number of mass shootings, still use guns to sell their cars. You would think a car could sell itself by its merits and with some good talking points from the dealer, but this is America we’re talking about.

Ford doesn’t have the best selling, America-made car in the U.S. for 2019 (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has, with the Jeep Cherokee), but it remains the quintessential American car marque. Still, for whatever reason, every few months, one of their authorized dealership resorts to offering free guns in order to boost sales. And yes, the method works, even though in every instance the dealer is eventually forced to pull the ads and rescind the offer.

It happened in October 2019, with a South Carolina Ford dealer, who offered a $400 voucher for the purchase of an AR-15 rifle with each new car. Prior to that, that same year, another Ford dealership in Chatom, Alabama, offered a Bible, a flag and a shotgun (later changed to a $200 voucher at one of the local gun stores) with the acquisition of a new or pre-owned car. And these are just two of the examples that made headlines by late 2019.

It’s not just Ford dealerships who are doing that, either. For its part, Ford has tried to distance itself from the practice, saying that local promotions are not overseen or approved by them, but their name remains attached to this type of offers, whether they like it or not.

And you can’t even begin to imagine the controversy that comes with offers of this kind. On the one hand, you have those who applaud the initiative, saying that only a very patriotic car dealership would go the extra mile to ensure that the 2nd amendment stands. The pride of being American, it seems, is largely dependent on how many guns you own.

On the other hand, you have those who criticize the move. When yearly mass shootings have grown so much in number that it’s getting harder to keep count, and when the preferred weapon of choice seems to be an AR-15, it’s wrong to further promote the rifles – as is the association between the joy of buying a new car and gun ownership.

Whether America needs stricter gun regulations is not up for discussion here, but the practice of tying guns to Ford cars – trucks, in particular – is. Needless to point out, Americans stand apart from almost every other nation when it comes to gun ownership, as well as their feelings about it. The constitution clearly states that they “have the right to bear arms” and they will not stand for anyone to intervene and mandate if or how many of those weapons they can own or carry.

In recent years, though, there’s been a shift in mentality. All these “comes with free weapon” car offers have met a similar fate, in the sense that the ads and the offers themselves had to be pulled after public pushback, heavy media coverage and criticism. Not all Americans are for handing out guns like candy to anyone looking to buy a car, it seems.

With all that, these offers do pop up regularly, either ahead of the 4th of July or right before the end-of-year sales. They may be short-lived, but they remain just as efficient: even though dealers pull the ads within days, the effect is like a ripple in a pond thanks to word of mouth.

In the end, the campaigns prove successful because sales boom, proving once more that any type of publicity is good publicity. And proving that, when it comes to cars, there is nothing better to sweeten the deal than the promise of a free weapon.