RS6 pricing

[Lee Levitt]

Taka, pricing the car at $70K may be considered greedy. But IT 
DIDN'T SELL AT $70K.

Personally, I'd consider the dealer *stupid*. They wanted to hit a 
home run on the car. They overpriced it and it didn't sell. They 
sat on it while it depreciated, and then they wholesaled it out 
for what they paid for it (less, given their carrying costs.)

Again, market forces at work. If you had offered the wholesale 
manager $50K the week the car was scheduled to go to auction, you 
might have gotten it at that price. Market forces at work...

Oh, and by the way, I'm willing to bet that the GM of the 
dealership...the guy that priced that car originally...drove that 
car a fair bit while it was at the dealership. He may have 
overpriced it just so he could enjoy it for a while. There's a 
*lot* of leeway on stuff like this and games go on *all* the time 
at dealerships. At most dealers, there's very little real 
financial accounting going on, and "reserving" a nice car for 
yourself is considered an entitlement by management.

When I was at Boston Volvo (seems a hundred years ago), the sales 
GM drove a nice MB 230 sedan. He was a jerk, couldn't be seen in a 
pedestrian Volvo S80 or similar, so he took the MB in trade and 
never let go of it. Didn't cost him a dime in gas, insurance, etc. 
Perk of the position.

Lee



On Thu Nov 09 04:46:15 PST 2006, Taka Mizutani 
<t44tqtro at gmail.com> wrote:

> I do consider it inflated, because there are plenty of brokers 
> that can buy
> the car
> for you wholesale and you're not paying them a $15k profit.
> 
> The dealers are not going to disclose what they actually sell the 
> car for- I
> know my local
> dealer got in a trade RS6 w/ under 30k miles, paid the owner 
> something like
> $45k, then
> retailed the car for $70k.
> 
> The car sat on the lot forever, went to auction, sold for around 
> $45k, IIRC,
> maybe less.
> 
> If you paid $45k for a car of known provenance (sold to the 
> original owner
> at the same dealership and maintained there), selling as CPO 
> would only cost
> them about $47k total, then retailing for about $55k allows for 
> markdown
> room and a healthy profit. $70k is just plain greedy. Even with a 
> $55k
> asking, realistically it would probably sell for $50-51k. At that 
> price, no
> issues selling, esp. as a CPO car in a desirable color (Daytona 
> Grey with
> charcoal interior).
> 
> Taka
>