F-150

Make
Ford
Segment
Sports Car

Forget motherhood and apple pie, or ice-cold beer at a baseball game – in the Deep South, they have different ideas about what America stands for. And one dealer in rural Alabama is handing them out to each customer who buys or leases a new Ford.

Chatom Ford recently kicked off a "God, Guns and Freedom" promotion that bundles a bible, an American flag, and a shotgun with each purchase. And it seems to be doing the trick, boosting both traffic on the dealer's Facebook page, and its sales performance. But Ford doesn't like it so much.

Now before you get all, um... up in arms, Chatom Ford isn't simply tossing a firearm in the back of every Mustang or F-150 that drives off its lot. While the Star-Spangled Banner and the Good Book are apparently handed out in the showroom, the shotgun comes in the form of a certificate redeemable at local gun stores that partnered with the dealership on the promotion, and are still subject to background checks. And customers don't have to take the gun if they don't want it. Nobody's pointing a gun at anyone's head, so to speak.

"Anyone that doesn't 100% agree with what we're portraying, we're not trying to force our beliefs on anybody," the dealership's sales manager Kolby Palmer told USA Today. "We respect anybody that disagrees, no matter how vehemently they do."

Ford is evidently among those who disagree and asked the Chatom franchise to take down the video promoting the sale from the dealer's own Facebook page. Which it did, but has since uploaded a new one, replacing the "shotgun" part with "a gift certificate to use wherever you want for whatever you want, it's your right."