Yes, there is a dealer who has chosen to market his dealership aggressively by having a presence at the top of all Chevrolet searches in your market. Has your dealership never paid for a billboard near a competitor to make sure your name is seen by their customers? Same concept. However, of the 7 used Impalas listed within 10 miles of your zip code, 6 are yours, 1 is another dealer in your same zip code and they take up the entire page of the listings section.
When expanded to a 50 mile radius, you have several used Impala listings on the first page. That's hardly the bottom of the earth and the ones above you are more expensive, making yours look even better. Keep in mind that YOUR inventory is also showing up in searches performed by shoppers located 50 and 100 miles away from you. Would you prefer that your well-merchandised, competitively priced vehicles not be seen by those shoppers because they should only consider a vehicle from their local dealer? It’s a two-way street.
Internet shoppers know who their local Chevrolet dealer is and how to find them online. However, they are still going to search beyond their local market for competitive deals because it only takes a few mouse clicks to do so. Restricting them to seeing just your inventory will not keep them from checking out other offerings through other sites. In my market, shoppers set their search parameter for a radius of 100 miles or more 65% of the time. From the shopper's standpoint, that's the beauty of the Internet. But again, you benefit from it by being exposed to non-local shoppers just as other dealers are exposed to shoppers from your market.
You could, just as your dealer pays the extra $$ to get radio spots during drive time, front and/or rear magazine covers, a larger yellow page ad, the centerfold and/or a color newspaper layout, a more prominently placed billboard, a commercial aired in more heavily-watched television time slots and a more prominent space on the back of your local church bulletin. In any advertising medium, there are dealers who desire more exposure for their business than their competitors have, and who understand that more prominent or more exclusive advertising “real estate†costs more. That’s why dealers pay more to be on the main highway and not three blocks off on a side road...more exposure usually costs more. And yes, it's legal.
My original post in this thread was to bring some logic to the highest-to-lowest price discussion. (If ATC recently tried a lowest-to-highest default sorting, as Joe suggests, it must have been a local test, because it was not done everywhere.)
I won’t be posting again as past experience has shown that doing so only engenders an unending bashing of ATC, which accomplishes nothing.
Thanks for your time and attention. 
