Markups are like an infestation of the car market that no one wants to get rid of. Or an STD. Either way they’re bad. You know it and I know it. But like the “Fast and Furious” movies, they keep happening. We’ve now reached a point where dealers are marking up cars they don’t even have yet. Take a Dallas area Lexus dealer who’s planning to markup the all-new GX when it hits their lot.
Now remember, Lexus dealers don’t even have the 2024 GX yet. If you do a search on any car-buying site, you’ll find plenty of stock of the outgoing generation of the GX; there’s even some brand-new 2022 models sitting around. But there are no ’24s yet.
The unknown individual posted the anticipated markup on Dallas’s Craiglist of all places. In the sparse listing, it says the dealer has an Eminent White Pearl GX 550 with Palomino (tan/brown) interior coming in late March or early April. Selling price? A cool $105,000, a wild markup.
Just how wild? Using the brief description provided in the listing, A 2024 GX 550 Luxury starts at $77,250 including destination. The Eminent White Pearl paint is another $500. Just with these two options you’re at $77,750. Without knowing any other options, this dealer is charging a markup of $27,250.
What bothers me about all of this is just how sketchy this whole thing is. There are just two Lexus dealerships in the Dallas area, and according to our resident car buying expert Tom McParland, both are pretty good, so much so that it would be weird if one of them were behind this. While it’s not strange to post new cars for sale on Craigslist, the vagueness of this could point to this being the work of a rogue salesperson or sales manager trying to get the drop on some unsuspecting buyer who just has to have the new GX before anyone else.
What’s more disturbing is that this probably won’t be the worst markup that we see once the 2024 GX starts hitting dealer lots in the next couple of months. But remember, don’t indulge this. Don’t even pay a $1 over sticker. Wait, or don’t buy one at all.