melvimbe
FRF Addict
This is a good point. The bottom line is that Ford's customer is the dealer, not the end user. Keeping your customers happy is fundamental to staying in business. When the customer goes so far as to do something that you think will damage your brand, you step in. Otherwise you stay out. Ford could require dealers to sell at MSRP. They don't want to. Arguably, they don't need to. Supply and demand will sort out pricing in short order. When trucks are in short supply, those who want them so badly that they'll pay extra will get them. If you fixed the price at MSRP, the friends and relatives of the dealer, the staff, or relatives of the staff will buy all of the inventory and flip it at the market price, pocketing the difference. The end user will always end up paying more for a scarce vehicle, the only difference being who makes the profit. If you somehow prevented this from happening, trucks would sell in minutes and there would be no inventory, so getting one would come down to what connections you have, Soviet-style. We all know how well that worked.
You make a good point that if Ford locked down prices at MSRP, it could create a lucrative secondary market. However, it's not as though Ford is powerless against that. If a dealer isn't selling to actual customers, then Ford can limit or eliminate their allocation. That's wouldn't eliminate other people from seeking that immediate profit, but Ford doesn't have to sell to regular offenders either.
This sort of thing does happen for retail items that are in short supply as well. Certainly happened with the new gen of gaming consoles. Retailers combat this sort of thing by limiting quantities sold to individual customers or just banning customers that are known scalpers and/or abuse the return policy. None of that translate to auto sales specifically, but the point is that there are ways of limiting a secondary scalping market that occurs when you lock in prices on products in short supply.
And that's not to say that Ford should lock prices to MSRP.