If a company manufactures a new car with any serious demand, a secondary market of car flippers seems to naturally develop the day those cars reach customer hands. Brands have begun to roll out campaigns to fight this, but none are as extreme as what Rolls Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös suggests the company will implement for the Spectre: a blacklist, banning resellers from buying another Spectre ever again.
As Müller-Ötvös told Car Dealer Magazine, the Spectre buying process involves prospective owners meeting the brand’s “need to prove who you are, what you want to do with the car… you need to qualify for a car and then you might get a slot for an order.” If a buyer re-sells the car from there, “they’re going immediately on a blacklist and this is it – you will never ever have the chance to acquire again.”
It is the most extreme plan to combat car flippers a manufacturer has introduced yet. General Motors had previously set the bar with a carrot-and-stick approach of both offering a financial incentive to keep your car for a year an controlling the transferability of warranties within the first year of a car’s ownership. GM also announced plans to restrict buyers in violation from reserving high-demand models in the future, but Rolls-Royce’s smaller and more specialized business allows them to eradicate flippers from the brand’s ecosystem entirely.
No matter how extreme a brand’s plan to combat these secondary markets may be, they will not always stop owners more interested in a quick profit than the car they ordered. Car Dealer Magazine quotes a supercar reseller that has already agreed to buy two Spectresfor the equivalent of a $64,000 markup.
Keyword: Rolls-Royce Has a Zero-Tolerance Policy for Spectre Resellers