The publication of the original UCC in 1952 sparked an expansion of the statute of frauds in the United States to cover sales of goods of $500 or more.  At about the same time (in 1954), the British Parliament repealed its longstanding statute of frauds as applied to sales of goods. Some have argued that we should scrap UCC 2-201 on the grounds that it encourages misdealing as much as it prevents fraud.  Consider the following two hypotheticals:

(In the U.S.) Johnny is looking at a used Chevy Tahoe. He knows that the $7000 price is a good one, but he wants to go online and see if he can find an even better deal. In the twenty minutes he has been with the car’s current owner, the owner has received three phone calls about the car. Johnny wants to make sure that no one else buys the car while he is thinking the deal over, so he makes a verbal agreement to buy the car and shakes the seller’s hand. He knows that, because of the statute of frauds, and the fact that that nothing is in writing, he does not yet have any enforceable obligation to buy the car.

(In the U.K.) Nigel sells used Peugeots in Liverpool. When he senses interest from customers, he aggressively badgers them until they verbally commit to buy. If the customers later get cold feet and try to back out of the deal, he holds them to the verbal contracts. Because there is no longer a UCC-style statute of frauds in Britain, the buyers are stuck. 

Rate the degree to which you believe Johnny and Nigel acted wrongfully. Did one behave more wrongfully than the other? If so, which one, and why?