I can honestly say that I have never met a classic car dealer who isn't a genuine enthusiast. Sure, varying levels of enthusiasm and some of them have been pretty hard-nosed businessmen, but it's such a niche and knowledge-based field that it simply doesn't attract people with zero interest in the subject. If it did, they wouldn't last very long.
So, I often wonder why so many of these dealers have such a bad reputation, are viewed by so many as some sort of parasites on our hobby akin to estate agents, politicians, or even, er, journalists.
Ever since I have been in this game C&SC has regularly received disgruntled letters about dealers' "unseemly profiteering" based simply on readers marrying up the info in our auctions results and classifieds in the same (or following) issue showing the same car for sale at a higher price. Or sometimes more directly from people who have sold a car to a dealer and been "horrified" at its new asking price in an advert.
Of late, the age of the internet has brought the way our trading pyramid works sharply into focus and made that sort of information far more available to everyone, which then makes the way dealers operate all the more glaring and in turn ramps up the opprobrium from the rank and file.
Two recent examples I have been following, illustrate the point rather well.