What Price Are Dealers Selling the Kia Stinger For?

Kia, you’ve come a long way.

From humble beginnings of offering basically “throwaway” cars, the brand is now successfully navigating itself into luxury and now sports car territory with the Kia Stinger. And by all accounts, the Stinger is a real winner (Vehicle of the Year by Roadshow, Best of the Year by Motorweek). Let’s just hope the dealerships don’t screw up the experience.

A recent article from Jalopnik exposed a long-time concern with dealers when they know they have a little piece of gold coming into inventory. They jack up the price.

Here’s the account from one buyer in the site’s article:

“This was a Sunset Yellow Stinger GT2 RWD which stickers for $50,100. They looked me dead in the face and said: “$54,900 that’s the price”. $4800 over because “Kia told us we have to sell the car at a certain price” Then the dealer said“We can take off the extra $1200 for mudflaps ($95 on the Kia website) and $1200 for ‘nitrogen tire treatment’ (take it out and give me good old air), but the $2500 Limited Edition markup is required”…

The response from Kia of America was that they “actively discourage” their dealers to mark up the pricing on their cars.

So what price are dealers selling the Kia Stinger for? It all depends on the dealer – but raising the price past MSRP happens more than anyone would like to believe. Dodge even set their own parameters to avoid this with the Demon (Hi, Kia?)

Personally, I had a family member fall into this game as far back as the Pontiac Solstice (I know…). First, they bought the car for over MSRP. But it gets better – after just a few months, the demand had gone up even more for the car, so the dealership called them up and offered to buy it back for an even higher price than they bought it for so they could resell it again. Of course, they didn’t take the dealer up on the offer and interest and value in the vehicle quickly waned.

Whatever is happening with the Stinger, let’s hope it doesn’t stem the momentum for what is a surprisingly sweet ride from the brand. Because there is interest – and Kia is even going on the road for test drive event to drum up more interest.

But, please people, don’t pay over MSRP. It’s no wonder the dealership model is changing.