Rolls-Royce Spectre Flippers Will Be Immediately Blacklisted, CEO Says
Rolls-Royce won’t tolerate car flippers, and some of London’s finest dealers aren’t happy it about it.
Rolls-Royce won't tolerate buyers who flip their cars for profit. In recent years, it's become the norm for deep-pocketed buyers to snatch up limited allocations for ultra-exclusive cars and immediately re-sell them for much more than they originally paid. The idea is that once the car's production is sold out, its value on the second-hand market skyrockets. However, Goodwood ain't doin' none of that, and will reportedly permanently blacklist anyone who flips their Rolls-Royce Spectre EV for profit.
"They’re going immediately on a blacklist and this is it—you will never ever have the chance to acquire again," Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös told Car Dealer magazine.
Rolls isn't the first brand to express frustration with flippers. Back in 2017, Porsche GT boss Andreas Preuninger said that Porsche was monitoring which customers were flipping cars to limit special car allocations to such people. "I personally like to see my cars being used. That’s what we build them for. They are just too good to be left to stand and collect dust ... I don’t like this business of people buying our cars to make money on them. That was never our intention," he told Car and Driver then.
More recently, GM announced that it would penalize any customers who flip the Corvette Z06 by dropping certain warranties if the car is sold within a year. Not only that but customers who flip their Z06s won't be allowed to snag allocations on any future GM vehicles.
This obviously upsets some high-end car dealers who make quite a bit of money from buying and selling valuable, limited-edition cars.
UK supercar dealer Tom Hartley expressed his displeasure with Rolls' new policy to Car Dealer. "I have already agreed to buy two Spectres from customers. I do not think it is fair for car makers to tell customers who have spent close to half a million pounds on a car what they can do with it."
However, I believe Rolls is doing the right thing here. Flippers ruin things for customers who genuinely want to buy a new car at a fair price, and also for customers looking for used models in the second market. Overall, it spoils the entire ecosystem of high-end car buying.
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