The act of buying a popular or desirable car just to resell it to someone else for more money, also known as flipping, is a pain in the ass for every automaker with a desirable model. Even with plenty of examples of people placing the wrong bets that they’ll be able to sell their car on some auctions site and losing, greedy buyers still engage in the practice. Some automakers have made moves to stop this though.
GM is one of those automakers fighting back against flipping. GM Authority reports that GMC has put language in the warranty of the Canyon AT4X that will void certain parts of the truck’s warranty if a buyer goes and flips it.
GM Authority says the stipulation can be found in the language for the truck’s warranty coverage. It requires a six month ownership period for both the Canyon AT4X and the AT4X AEV Edition, both high priced off road versions of the Canyon. If a buyer gets greedy though and flips it before those six months, they’ll find these parts of the truck’s warranty voided:
- Bumper to bumper warranty
- Powertrain warranty
- Sheet metal coverage
- Tire Coverage
- Accessory coverage
These Canyon models aren’t the first vehicles GM has had this requirement for as GM Authority pointed out. The ownership requirement has been placed on a few GM models, most of which are popular with flippers and dealer markups.
General Motors has placed similar ownership requirements on other high-demand enthusiast vehicles, such as the 2023 and 2024 Corvette Z06, the 2024 Corvette E-Ray, the 2023 and 2024 GMC Hummer EV Pickup, the 2024 GMC Hummer EV SUV, and the 2023 and 2024 Cadillac Escalade-V.
General Motors previously instated an ownership requirement of 12 months, but later reduced the requirement to six months. Additionally, some Chevy owners were offered 500,000 My Chevrolet Rewards points, a $5,000 value, for retaining ownership of their new vehicle for the duration of the required ownership period.
It’s interesting to see GM take such a firm stance against owners who want to make some extra money off a vehicle purchase. However some may have a problem with the stance as GM is essentially coming out against owners making extra money, but isn’t as heavy handed about dealers doing nearly the same thing with big vehicle markups.