Looking like the R35 is going to be hard to get and very expensive, with wait lists and back-orders. It is just looking that way to me....

 

The fact that they are only producing 1500 per year will raise the msrp. With a production run like that every year, markup will be extremely high.

 

My guess is that the first 6 months, the numbers will be insanity. HOWEVER, since the prediction over at Nissan is that the bulk of the cars they sell will be leases, you'll very quickly run out of people willing to shell out $25,000 out of their pocket for a leasehold Nissan -- no matter how cool it is. I also find it VERY doubtful that Nissan Motor Credit will allow financing of significant dealer adjustments. It doesn't happen with Ferrari, it's not gonna happen with Nissan.

At the LA Auto Show, Nissan said a few things that make me believe that they are gonna work hard to get cars in to the hands of customers and try to minimize the "mark up".

Here's what they said:

- The commitment a dealer needs to make to sell the GTR is quite extensive. There's a week long training program being developed that technicians will have to attend. Additionally, there's a rather expensive tool and equipment purchase a dealer must make to service the GTR. (In order to sell the GTR, you need to be equipped and certified to service the GTR).

What does this mean? When the Ford GT came out, there was no such barrier to getting the car, and it was the dealers that got 1 car that were very far from markets where the car would sell that really held the line on pricing. (I owned a GT for a while so I spent a LOT of time searching for one). The theory is that the smaller dealers will not be able to make the service commitment and therefore you wont have the product in inventory in remote markets sitting there with a ridiculous mark up on the car giving the impression of an artificially inflated market.

- A factory-run online pre-order system will be announced soon. I could not get an answer about whether or not a pre-order of the car in the system will be a safe-harbor to get a car at MSRP before cars go in to dealer inventory. Or whether or not it was a lead generation tool for dealers.

What does this mean? the guys at Nissan know that THEY are the ones that get hurt if the car prices go UP UP UP! If the average car sticker is 71k, and the average transaction price is 91k for the first year, that's $30,000,000 they could have made selling the car that they gave to the dealer network. Plus, it prevents the folks like us who want the car to drive the snot out of it to get the car. And they don't want that. A vibrant aftermarket with greater demand is better for Nissan than a bunch of guys with more money than common sense sticking these cars in their collections and taking them out every other Sunday...

- Finally, I heard from several people several times at several different places that they are trying to institute some deal terms to prevent people from getting the car and flipping it. While it's not very practical or legal to enforce customer contracts that demand that you do not sell the car for a certain period of time, there are things that they can do with their commitment to service and earranty the car.

What does this mean? In the Ferrari world, dealers CANNOT mark up new cars, so some dealers sell cars to customers they know will buy the car for cash, put 300 miles on it, then sell it back and buy something new... Nissan does not want that to happen either, so they are working on some "rules" to make that difficult to do. In the olden days, new owners of the F50 could not buy the car. You could only do a 2-year lease through Ferrari North America. This kept those cars under control price-wise for the first 2 years... Nissan's not dumb, so it'll be interesting to see where this ends up.

So, let's not give up hope just quite yet!