Fourteen dealers in California filed formal protests at the New Motor Vehicle Board on May 1. The federal case survived a motion to dismiss in March and is moving to discovery. There are additional suits in Florida and Virginia, with one seeking class action status that would cover every VW dealer in the country. The pre-hearing conference is set for May 18.

Here is the thing people need to understand about the VW argument. They are claiming Scout is independent. Scout is owned by Volkswagen. Scout vehicles will be built in Volkswagen owned factories. AB 473 in California was written specifically to close this exact loophole, and the record shows Scout's own general counsel acknowledged before the bill passed that it would prohibit this sales model. They lobbied for carve-out language, did not get it, and then proceeded anyway. That is not a legal gray area. That is a calculated bet that enforcement will be slow or weak. Dealers who built their VW business over decades, some of them 70 years in, are being told the brand they invested in is now going to compete directly against them. If the franchise model cannot hold here, it cannot hold anywhere.