I am ready for California to secede.
saw 11 Emira's @ the Austin dealer a few weeks ago. I suspect they are still there. good: all were manuals! bad - been there weeks. Rust on brake discs. Can't deliver them 'cause of the guv'ment. (and or bad planning by Lotus...) during my looooooong wait, I ended up buying a CPO 2017 AMG GT. Man I love that car. it was significantly LESS (by 35% ish) than the new Emira will be. So... I looked and looked at them, and asked myself - "is the Lotus worth $35,000 more than my new-to-me car?" it certainly won't sound as good! won't have that V8 grunt but..... it WOULD be a manual.... in the end... maybe in a couple of years I'll pick up an Emira used. They are already depreciating in Europe. I suspect they will do what most cars do and depreciate a lot (e.g. MC20 - those have been slaughtered....) Too bad Lotus... I had such high hopes.
I gues the silver lining is that by the time Lotus gets permisiion to sell these cars, they will have stopped ice production, so Ervine will want one and theyll fly off the lots.. if you want a great lotus, the greatest one ever built, go to shinoo at inokinetic and have him build you an elise with all the good bits, and his great na motor. There is no lotus better than that. .
On pricing When see the ridiculous markups at price even for used cars, well an Emira at list is a bargain.
I'm confident they are all customer cars that have not been / can not be released. every dealer had 50-100 people on the wait list.
Seems like theyre advertised for sale. Maybe customers pulled out, or maybe they cant sell in California but the other non carb states are ok. Some here say and emira is too expensive and has to compete with porche, In any event porche dealers appear to have little to no stock of cars people actually wnat to buy, plenty of lame elctric taycans and SUVs. Where porche dealers do have a sportscar, its a hefty markup, or you're buying a 500miles used abused flipper car for a list premium.. Against that backdrop an emira at list is a bargain. Sadly instead off evolving the emira into something Lotus threatens to go all electric just as electric goes bust. Classic lotus then.
I heard from Dallas Lotus today. They are delivering and selling Emira's as they had about a dozen people back out. They are of course asking for a markup on the existing backed out on cars. MSRP $109K selling for $121k so a $12k markup over msrp.
Well, they can "ask"... I'm watching this from afar - was a Lotus guy for a few years, but bailed right at the Emira announcement, selling my Evora... Still have fond feelings for them, but mixed with so much disappointment... Kevin
Any markup over msrp is bad. Its greed and as long as there are foolish people who over pay it just perputuates a sh$*$y practice that should not happen.
Free markets set the price so long as you didn’t already have a contracted price mutually agreed upon from the jump…
Yep and that is mostly driven by flippers who do not help the brand nor the actual end user, but dealers love it. Ferrari eventually effectively tackled it, porche for some reason has no desire to. In any event the flip trade is out the door for many cars now, on bat there was 23 911 turbo with under 500 miles that couldn't get to list. Meanwhile my crappy Toyota dealer is asking 5k dealer market adjustment on a parking lot full of tundras, they really are that dumb and disdainful of "customers" The last few new 23 z06 vettes that hit bat sold for the list plus taxes the flipper paid. that trade too is more or less at an end. Lotus is going to make as many emira as peopel will buy, a dealer markup is idiotic practice, but may catch a few while turning off many. Within a year there will be dicounts to be had. Further up the food chain the new aston vantage looks great and the specs really interesting, theyll also make as many as there are customers.
Not sure I’m following who you think is creating a false shortage. What do you mean exactly? Flippers? If so, they are simply taking advantage of market force driven arbitrage if the flipper bought as MSRP. The ultimate price of a car is where a seller is willing to sell it and a buyer agrees at that sum. High or low. You want a Z06 before anyone else at the country club? Pony up. If not, wait. But begrudging the flipper means you also begrudge the buyer.
You are way oversimplifying the sale of a branded consumer product and conflating it with market forces related to commodities stocks etc which would be pure market force driven arbitrage. More so when only certain insiders are allowed thew arb. When a "dealer" who is an independent businessperson takes a manufactures product and sells to someone else who will not be the end user(for who the manufactures made the product) , so that they and the flipper may profit, this harms the brand, customer retention and long term prospects. The manufacturer has dealers who are supposed to put the best foot of the brand forwards and earn and proscribed profit. This is because unlike wall street where only next quarters profits count, car watch clothing brand manufactures seek a long term growth and attach a lot of value to stability, customer retention and brand value perception, all of which are negated by flippers.. Its why ferrari stopped dealers only selling to favored clients who then sold the car back to a dealer 6 months later for list allowing the dealer to circumvent ferraris prohibition on dealers selling for a premium above list, its called brand management and ferrari are the masters of it. in any event its is obvious that strong market forces will cause the above to happen regardless. However for a manufactured product these market forces are not endless. Such is the case with the emira or tundra truck. There simply is no shortage. What were seeing is dealers assuming(to use the Goldman term) that customers are muppets, and that by asking a markup some few will be dumb enough to pay it. Maybe fine when the market is strong and youre porche, not fine when you're lotus and trying to attract new customers to the fold, and having already lots mroe than few though late delivery. Thats false shortage. Weve seen that false shortage so many times in the car biz. It usually ends badly. often with dealers unloading at big discounts and cycle end harming brand equity. manufactures have an interest in sustainable customer bases and sales. Excess profits earned by flippers or dealers do nothing for the manufacturer other than harm long term stability and prospects. To your point the solution of course is to produce more of the vehicles customers actualy do want to buy and where there is good profit. Thats the corvette z06 model, if you don't need to be the first guy on the block they'll be producing plenty. Actually real brand management means make 1 less than the market desires. If you make less than that youre throwing away opportunity and making flippers wealthy while denuding your brand equity. my point is for many cars and trucks in 2024 were already at plenty, from MC20 to z06 and Ill bet the emira. For a dealer to pretend otherwise is to essentially harm the manufactures customer base and send said customers to another brand, its basically stupid. The only brands i can think of where this does not apply is rolex and porche, neither of who seem to have any real competition in their specific place. However even then premiums on new rolexs have dropped significantly as is also the case at porche. meanwhile excess shortages beget competition. The games at ferrai delaers and shrt supply gave rise to maclren and the expanded lamborghini. Lotus opportunity with the emira was to get customers looking for type of car porche/vette builds but willing to go outside for something a bit unique for elss cost and less pretentious dealers. Having ones dealers then behave as though theyre selling porches or premium short supply brand is epically stupid. Emira dealers should be taking care of any and all customers as family. But then how often does lotus end in tears. I have many reasons to favor independent dealers over manufacturer owned ones, but the these types of pricing games and poor brand management is exactly why manufacturer dealers is also appealing. perhaos manufactures need to create their won version of the Lexus dealer model.
Flippers put their money at risk. Candidly I respect them more than an influencer getting a car early
We might say flippers are just a byproduct of poor band management and poor production planning. However we also in many other fields make insider trading illegal. What is the process by which a flipper gets a car over an actual end user customer. Its not always wrong, and its also not always good. In then ed it behooves manufactures to manage their brands better or pay the price long term. In some cases with cars manufactures have wanted to own their dealers only to be met with legal prohibitions. Sadly many dealers in short term greed do long term harm. In todays internet world its easy to search other options. We also need to differentiate in the discussion between flippers and dealers. Im particularly focused on dealers who may a empower flippers for a backhander or be behave as flippers themselves. A dealer in the end is a franchisee not a purely free agent. But dealers are governed by the national importer who feeds crap back to a manufacturer. We saw that years ago with Honda NA getting nailed by the justice dept for getting backhands on allocations from dealers. Its curious to me now, there is not a flipper opportunity on a honda CTR due to taxes etc, but dealers are still quite happily tacking 10k on. Why does honda not just produce more, satisfy customers get rid of premiums etc. I get there were supply chain disruptions 2 years ago driving premiums, but thats not true now. i can also see at porche theyre producing 50k 911s and that may seem long term unsustainable so theyre afraid to increase.
Lets see how these flips turn out. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2022-ferrari-296-gtb-3/ https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2018-porsche-911-gt3-98/
