AndyN

Glad to hear I'm not the only one having trouble swallowing the mark up. Nissan should have just charged $90-100k for the car and I think they'd still have people interested. Tell me the MSRP is $72k but mark it up $20-35k (Bay Area, CA) and for some odd reason I feel like I'm getting ripped off. I'm hoping folks drop off the wait list and the mark up hits $5-10k. This was going to be my first big car purchase but not with that mark up.

MacManInfi

Exactly! You know what it is? It's because you're not actually paying for anything physical. "Here, just let me give you $10,000 just cause you're greedy and I'm impatient". Ten thousand dollars!?! Surely there are more important things to do with that much money?

Interesting read in Autoweek this week. One journalist talking about how when the Vette ZR-1 first came out in 1990? that everyone paid way over MSRP ($70,000 over in some cases). Today, low mile examples are only worth $25k.

Go ahead and pay your mark up for the GT-R to get it now and hope you don't ever sell it because that money evaporates the second you sign the dotted line.

Perhaps it's a good thing. There's certainly a lot of benefits to waiting. The price will drop (hopefully), first year bugs will get sorted out (I had a 2001 Vette Z06 that had to have the motor torn down and rings replaced, as did many others) and who knows, maybe the V-Spec will be out in a year or two and either I'll be able to get one of those, or I'll buy someone else's who's trading up.

AndyN

You're right, perhaps it is a good thing. Forced patience. I see paying MSRP as overpaying as it is. Maybe I can find something else to waste my money on this year and wait for a better opportunity. Heck of a car though.

danox574

There are short and long term effects to this price gouging. You can speak to me all you wish about supply and demand curves, but luxury items already have a lot of value inflation by their very nature, and it does in fact change the game a little bit.

I feel for the dealerships that put out a $50k franchise fee and get allocated one car in the first year, and I recognize that they want to make their money back. There's some accounting pressure to do that obviously, but it just shows the type of people who are involved in this are not in it for the long term.

After 2 or 3 abhorrent experiences at dealers, I won't buy a 2009 GT-R. I probably wasn't going to buy one anyway, really, because I wasn't early enough. Net loss to Nissan? Nothing. Now, based on their behavior, the chance of me buying a 2010 is *significantly* lower than it was before. In addition, if my wife drove me there to pick it up with me and fell in love with something on the lot (which does happen), I would have bought it for her, but not now, because I've already seen what's driving the decisions they make. The entire opportunity for us to become a Nissan family is simply disintegrated. Every dealer I spoke to seems to me to be just so money-hungry, that if I was to buy a truck, or a passenger car, or a 350Z, I would cringe at the experience of even going in to shop for it for fear of being lied to or taken for another few bucks -- and I have good reason to believe that, that is what happened when I went in to buy a GT-R (and I do mean buy).

Net loss to Nissan? Immesurable. When I buy an M3 this year, or a used GT-R next year, or anything that doesn't involve the dealership, it's a small dent. How many people are coming with me after this horrendous experience?

Then, I get an email from Nissan yesterday touting the new GT-R, the Supercar for anyone, anywhere, anytime. Yeah, except me, here, and now apparently.

I am in other luxury markets as well, mainly wristwatches. I have dealers and companies who are enthusiastic about pairing me with pieces that move me, and I get items at retail that you might not be able to, because I buy for myself and the dealers love to sell to me, because I don't flip. Did you hear that? The dealer cares who they sell to instead of how much money they can extract from a rare piece. These dealers are healthly, strong, reputable, and doing good business. They could have made a few more bucks, but having the business intact and strong is far more important to them. When they spend $1 million dollars to get into a new line of watches, they sell at retail and experience the pain on day one so they can sell at retail and experience the benefits in a few years.

Pricing considerations and market adjustments on the GT-R *now* means pricing considerations and market adjustments in the future, and not always in the dealer's favor, trust me.

Believe me, these dealers aren't selling you over sticker because they can make a quick buck, you're becoming a qualified cash-producer at the service shop for them and into the future however they can figure out a way to achieve it. Go pay them $20k over and see how you get treated next time you need a favor and you've established that fair pricing or money are not of importance to you. I'm sure you're guessing that they'll bend over backwards, but why in the world do you think they'll start doing that after the purchase?

Do you really think they're done gouging you after this one time?

gogoevo

Well said.

MagicMtnDan

This is perhaps the biggest problem and it's all Nissan's doing. They targeted a $135,000 car's performance and did it right. But they completely missed their pricing target. Perhaps they under-priced the car because they wanted to sell it at Nissan dealerships. Whatever the reason, they've made a huge marketing mistake by under-pricing the car.

Furthermore the problem is exacerbated by the fact that dealerships don't make that much money on the cars (Japanese dealerships historically have thinner margins on their vehicles but they do sell more). This is encouraging the dealers to make as much money as they can on these limited quantities of vehicles they are getting.

Plus it doesn't help them that Nissan is charging them a premium to sell the cars.

All this adds up to over-MSRP sell prices and they won't come down if the quantity of cars produced continues to be low.

Nissan gets an A+ for producing this car. And they get a D- for how they're handling its marketing and sales. This combination isn't going to benefit Nissan like it could have.

rmatt8748

if we turn to a basic supply and demand curve, we can answer several questions

the demand for this car is high, it would still be high if it cost $135,000, car's are not priced on performance alone, generally higher performance = higher cost, car's are based on production cost and brand value

theoretically, if they produced more GT-R's, this would better meet demand, it might have made sense to stockpile them and release a ton of them at once, that is a way to attempt to combat price gouging.

if they raised the price, demand would lessen, and they would be closer to meeting it


also, i don't know that the car is underpriced, there is just much MORE consumer surplus than most people are used to seeing. that was Nissan's goal, to produce a super-car at affordable cost, because this car has huge value (benefits/price) it is in high demand

Nissan has done very well with this car so far. They produced a car that goes faster than a 911 turbo (performance benchmark), and it costs considerably less.

I know that everyone whines about the markups, but it's hard to control capitalism at work. If anything, this is a good starter course in economic theory.

Blairwarlock

"We are taking steps to let the dealers know that marking up the car is not a good thing,"


Haha, is that a joke? I mean I can just see the dealer's response:

"Ok, thanks for your input.
(turns around)
Let the auction begin!!"

Dealers are independently owned. Nissan cannot stop them from charging what they want. They CAN however limit their future vehicle allocation. We will see if Nissan does anything. I highly doubt it.

ZOsixTT

Demand is not high, if it was, they would have alreadly sold out, instead more than 50% of the cars coming to the us are unsold. If the gtr was priced at 135,000 they wouldnt sell many if any. The dealers are attempting to extract all the conumer surplus, but it doesnt seen than many want to pay more than msrp.

GTRGuy

Has anybody ventured into a Nissan dealership lately? From what I've seen, this car is doomed! They definitely screwed the pooch when they went with Nissan rather than Infiniti. At least the Infiniti store has a clue about the importance of the buying experience. As an avowed Porschephile, I must confess that Porsche doesn't always get it right, either. But Porsche is miles ahead of Nissan, as witnessed by this price gouging on the GT-R. The only real price gouging I've seen at a Porsche store was with the Carrera GT, which was already $400K and just a leeeeetle bit outside my budget. ;-)

BTW, Lexus has the best buying experience in the biz, IMHO. At the very least, Nissan should appoint GT-R "experts" in each dealership, and THAT's the guy who sells the car. This car is so specialized I can't imagine what will happen when a qualified GT-R buyer walks onto the lot and becomes just another "up." What on Earth was Nissan (or Renault) thinking?

If I decide to spend $70k+/- on my next car, my solution is simple; if any, repeat ANY "market adjustment" dealer markup remains on the GT-R, there will be a used 911 Turbo in my garage. End if discussion.

Are you listening, Nissan?

I will never pay over MSRP. Period. If that means I wait a while to get whatever it is I want, then so be it.

Are you listening, Nissan?

All that being said, here in the US a manufacturer walks a fine line. They are free to issue MSRP, Manufacturers SUGGESTED Retail Price. However, if a manufacturer leans on the dealers too heavily regarding pricing, they risk an antitrust action. All it takes is one angry dealer to say the mean old manufacturer won't allow him to make a fair profit and won't ship him cars because of his pricing structure/policies. The manufacturer takes it in the shorts. The dealer will probably lose his franchise at the first opportunity, but he won't care because he'll now be the majority shareholder of his very own car manufacturer. ;-)

Yeah, I think a used 911TT is probably in my future. ;-)

Are you listening, Nissan?