When car companies put out low-volume, limited-production cars and charge a premium for them, no one really minds. We accept the fact that these sorts of limited-run cars are going to cost more than they should. It’s just the nature of things. For instance, the MSRP on a BMW M4 GTS is $134,200. That makes it more than $50,000 more than a loaded BMW M4 Competition Package. However, it is basically a street-legal racing car, has a full roll cage, carbon fiber everywhere and even water-injection. So, fans accept that it’s a lot of money.
What fans and customer won’t accept is egregious price inflation by the dealerships. We know that dealers have a hard time getting cars like this and the supply is extremely limited. We also get that dealers have to make quite a bit of money on cars like this, as they’ll be sitting for a very long time. However, dealer markups can become simply insulting and this specific one on a BMW M4 GTS is exactly that.
This unnamed BMW dealer has a BMW M4 GTS for sale at the moment. If you take a look at its window sticker, you’ll see the base MSRP of $134,200, some added carbon fiber wheels for $18,000 and a “Market Adjustment” for — get ready — $100,000. That’s right, the dealer is charging $100k for a “Market Adjustment” which is just a fancy way of saying dealer markup. $100,000?! You can buy an additional BMW 7 Series, Porsche 911 Carrera or BMW X5 M for just the cost of that markup.
I get marking up certain cars because of supply and demand. Still an uncool thing to do, but I understand it, as do many fans. However, this is just rude. Who do they think is going to buy a car for an extra six-figure cost when they don’t have to? Do they think someone who can afford that car is going to just blindly put their money down? Now, admittedly, that “Market Adjustment” can be heavily negotiated and it will be. Still, though, a $100,000 markup is just rude.
[Source: Autoweek]
