Blacks, Women Charged More for Cars, Study Says

Women and blacks who bargain for a new car are given higher final prices than white men, according to a study surveying hundreds of car dealerships.

Black women were offered the highest prices, averaging $875 per car more than white men, the study found.

Ian Ayres, a Northwestern University law professor who headed the research, said the study results may be attributable to car dealers trying to concentrate profits by targeting a relatively few customers--”suckers”--who will pay higher markups.

That may not be bigotry, but it’s definitely discrimination, Ayres said.

“Treating black people differently in order to increase your revenues runs afoul of our traditional civil rights norms,” Ayres said.

An official with the National Automobile Dealers Assn. denied that any responsible salesman would target a person by race or sex, especially since most people go to several different dealers and play one off another while shopping. And while he hadn’t seen the study, NADA Vice President Frank McCarthy said the premise was not valid.

The study began three years ago and involved 90 Chicago-area dealerships. A follow-up survey of between 275 to 300 dealerships was conducted during the past year.

In the first study, three white male researchers divided among themselves dealerships selling the same brand of domestic car, then tried to get the best deal on a new car.

Each dealership also was visited at about the same time by one of three other researchers--a white woman, a black woman and a black man--who bargained over the same car. The researchers were prepared with carefully rehearsed negotiating tactics to get the best deal.

The make and model of the car was not disclosed, but researchers estimated the dealers’ cost at about $11,000.

The study found that white men received final offers that averaged about $11,362 on a new car with a sticker price of $13,465.

The white woman was given an average final price of $11,504, the black man an average final price of $11,783 and the black woman an average price of $12,237. No cars were actually purchased.

Ayres said that researchers were given the worst deals by salespeople of the same race and gender.