so I have become aware that the theoretical disctinctions that we might understand between the two terms is not so apparent on the forecourt
How true, Maverick. It all comes down in the end to "bargaining power".
The parties to a contract can make any agreement they wish. The party with the strongest bargaining position always comes out ahead. The ordinary people who buy the shares of the automakers for their retirement fund wouldn't have it any other way.
The automakers do need to give their dealer minions some incentive to invest. They do need dealers to sell their cars. And cars are not hamburgers.
You can sell a hamburger the same way in every city in North America, if not throughout the world, as McDonald's has proven.
But it takes some entrepreneurial imagination to sell cars successfully in different markets in different cities under constantly changing economic conditions.
Car dealers have demonstrated that they have more of that localized entrepreneurial imagination than do the automakers themselves, which explains why car dealships are not all franchises.
It is quite true that "dealer = agent", but that equation doesn't really set car dealerships apart from franchisees in the minds of most people.
"Agent" is a legal term. There can be all kinds of agents, commission sales agents, such as the "Avon Lady" or real estate agents, who don't make a significant or any investment in the supplier's product.
Or there can be car dealership agents who make a far greater investment in their agency relationship than commission sales agents.
And, certainly to the mind of the average person, a franchisee is the agent of the franchisor.
The franchisee sells only the products and services supplied by the franchisor [or products and services made or rendered according to the franchisor's precise specifications], and tho they own their own business, just as a car dealer does, they are even more rigidly contolled by the franchisor than a car dealer is by his supplier.
So in the mind of the average person, a franchisee might be even more of an "agent" than a car dealer.
Anyway, that is my take on it. The average person doesn't have any deep understanding of the legal niceties associated with the simple term "agent" in all of its variations.
Some "agents" are "exclusive agents". Some are "fiduciary agents" like your lawyer, or accountant or stockbroker. Some are just mail courier agents.
And some are "secret agents" who, if Ian Fleming has it right, don't have to go to a car dealership to get their car, or their licence to kill, either.
