With that pricing power, many dealers are marking up prices to well above sticker and selling to buyers willing to accept dealer-installed equipment that can reach into the thousands of dollars.
According to an Edmunds report from February, buyers paid above sticker price on a record 82 percent of all new vehicles in January, compared with 3 percent in January 2021. The average transaction price was $728 above sticker in January, compared with $2,152 below sticker price a year earlier.
In the Automotive News survey, more than a third of respondents acknowledged marking up new-vehicle prices to more than sticker, a practice that automakers are increasingly pushing back against.
But it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. The most common increase, by nearly half of those marking up, was for 6 to 10 percent above sticker. Just more than a quarter described their markups as 5 percent or less, while 15 percent put them at the 11 to 15 percent range.
Evans, though seeing much bigger markups at competitive dealerships, said his stores only mark up in limited circumstances and at modest levels.
“We’re seeing levels of $8,000 to $10,000 for cars” elsewhere, Evans said. “We are [at] a much, much lower level, if we do it at all. It’s more in the $1,500 to $2,000 range for the import cars. And really, to be quite honest, it’s for people who are calling us from far away.”
He’s not charging above-sticker prices to local customers who’ve bought from his group multiple times.
And “when it comes to Stellantis vehicles, we actually — other than something like a Wagoneer — are selling those cars at employee pricing,” Evans said.
