Tesla Motors, the California-based high-end electric car company, has positioned itself as a new kind of automaker. But this week in Missouri, it collided with an old kind of politics.

In what the car maker now alleges was a “sneak attack,” Missouri state legislators on Wednesday night quietly slipped a few lines of new wording into a pending bill and passed it through the state Senate with no debate. The altered legislation, if passed by the House next week and signed into law, would prohibit auto manufacturers from circumventing car dealerships and selling directly to buyers.

It would, in other words, make Tesla’s entire global marketing strategy illegal in the state of Missouri.

“We have just become aware of a last-minute attempt by the auto dealers lobby, via pressure on legislators, to bar Tesla from selling its vehicles direct to consumers in the state. This extraordinary maneuver amounts to a sneak attack to thwart due process and hurt consumer freedom in Missouri,” Tesla wrote in a statement on its website Thursday, entitled “Trouble in Missouri.”

The statement notes that the change came in the final days of the legislative session — traditionally a frantic time, and one in which controversial legislation is sometimes hurried along under the radar.