>>and the dealers are crying the blues that they didn't read the agreement closely enough, or consider the possible consequences.
>
>While I'm sure there's some poor-me belly-aching involved, there is still a matter of inventory devaluation which is rather particular to the auto dealers. There is theft here through forced devaluation.

It's interesting the vehicles are considered unsellable due to loss of incentives. That's a peculiarity of the modern auto marketing system, listing at a high price then getting a lower bottom line through incentives, rebates etc. The sole purpose of that scheme is to make pricing more complicated, in the hopes that the customer will pay more than he would with plain, Wal-Mart-style pricing. No doubt the dealer profited for years from that scam; now he's bellyaching that it's come around to bite him in an unexpected way.

It's too bad he actually owns the cars. My understanding is in the old days the dealers basically took cars on consignment, and could theoretically return unsold ones to the manufacturer. In practice, they rarely if ever returned any stock because of the high cost of doing so, they'd strike a deal with the maker to unload them at a discount. I don't know if a dealer still has a choice of going the consignment or the purchase route; I'm sure makers would sell cars to dealers at a lower cost through purchase than they would via consignment. If he did have the choice, and chose to purchase, he was making more per vehicle than through consignment, at the risk of being left with stock as he is now.

The cars not being sold as new: OK, that's a legal fiction, actually they're pre-owned with 0 on the odometer. I believe manufacturer's warranties are transferable (for whatever that's worth :-/)

Parts are a major profit center at a dealer. Dealers put a huge markup on them. If he can't get at least his money back from another dealer or auto parts dealer/chain, he could put them up on eBay. Sure, he'd be up against all the other ex-ChryCo dealers flogging their parts, but if he stuck to his local market he could keep delivery speed up and fill a known hole in parts supply.

So when you look at it in detail, it's almost all, if not all, bellyaching. Calling it theft is sensationalism.