RicerX
Well-Known Member
Nissan can absolutely penalize them by not allocating cars to that dealership. Nissan is the supplier of the product. The game then becomes if the dealership is willing to risk missing unit sales for a product launch with significant initial demand (and the extra potential revenue they can generate with service contracts, financing, and accessory sale opportunities) for a few extra bucks with markup on one unit. Further sour the relationship, and that dealer may miss out on other volume bonuses, etc, for employing tactics that potentially sour Nissan's brand image. A LOT of moving pieces here affected by a relatively simple practice stemming from basic supply and demand dynamics in free market economics.
This exact situation happened with the Civic Type R launch in the US. Honda outright cancelled some dealer orders for the car due to documented price gouging and those dealers missed out entirely after launch. Honda did not want the reputation of having vehicles marked up sky high. Honda wants Civic Type Rs on the road, not sitting in showrooms. The dealers accused of price-gouging by Honda didn't get more inventory, and those dealerships lost their Civic Type R buyers to other dealers.
Just today, Wall Street Journal reported that Ford and GM have fired warning shots to their dealer networks about price gouging and that if it continues they will deny them future inventory. That's a death sentence for a dealership right now. Some markups? Ok. Like 10% or so? I get that. However, locally, I have personally seen $75k Chevy Silverado 2500 Duramax trucks marked up to $115,000. That's absolutely egregious and should be stomped out.
My local Infiniti Dealership is marking up QX80s about $3,500 - not terrible for an $80k vehicle. However, they are feeling a bad supply crunch. Their loaner program has been eliminated by supply issues - Infiniti dealers only allow their loaners to be in use for a calendar year or so before they're lifecycled and sold as certified used vehicles. My local dealer's loaner fleet has aged out and there is not enough supply to replace them. They're just gone. They can't afford to pull from sales inventory because they would have no vehicles to sell and there are no vehicles to order.
It's very ugly out there right now.
