When Canada hosted the G7 political summit earlier this summer, someone thought it was a good idea to buy hundreds of brand-new 3.6-liter V6 2018 Chrysler 300s, Chevy Suburbans and others. Now Canada is selling them off with holes in the bumpers, low mileage and pretty good prices.
Do you want a used black V6 2018 Canada-built Chrysler 300? Do you want five? Because the government is also selling them off in batches of five. Now would be a great time to start a black car service from the ground up.
As Autoweek calculated, the average asking price of $25,343 Canadian for each 300 is about $19,300 in U.S. money, which isn’t so bad considering it starts at nearly $29,000 new here, and the ones for sale only have about 1,000 miles of use so far.
There are 140 300s for sale, 154 Chevy Suburbans, 109 Toyota Sienna minivans, and 28 Dodge Chargers for sale, though the catch is that all of them served in motorcades for politicians and their staff and security, so they all have plugged holes in the bumpers that used to house flashing LED lights.
There are also some administrative cars with less “damage” for sale, including Ford Explorers and Escapes, Mitsubishi Outlanders, Dodge Journeys and Nissan Rogues, according to Autoweek. You can find them by searching on the government’s sale website.
Canada’s the National Post reports that the government spent $23 million buying over 630 brand-new vehicles for this year’s G7 summit, which the government claimed was more affordable than any renting or leasing alternatives. The decision to buy also likely had to do with the light fabrications that were made, and it made sense on paper if the government thought it’d be able to sell them off used and make some of the money back.
The catch is that this is a lot of slightly damaged used cars still asking near $20,000 U.S., and between August and October, the government has only sold 167 and made back around $6.3 million. The National Post reports at least 40 listings have received zero bids from potential buyers in the last couple of weeks. Here’s more about the sale prices (in Canadian figures) from the Post:
The lowest-mileage vehicles are 2018 Chrysler 300s, which have a suggested market retail price of between $40,895 and $49,195 new, according to Driving.ca. Based on 29 sales over the past few months—almost half of which were for vehicles that had less than 100 km in mileage—bidders were paying an average of $27,780 per car.
At the higher end, buyers have been getting new Chevrolet Suburbans for an average $60,046, compared to a suggested retail price of $58,700 to $77,200. These, 26 of them, had been on the road for an average 1,698 km each.
Members of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation are upset that the government justified buying what factors out to 60 cars per G7 nation, which the Federation deems excessive. Only 51 of the cars purchased are planned to be kept by the government and repurposed.
So if you’ve got a bunch of cash sitting around and want to give Uber and Lyft a run for its money somewhere in Canada, now’s your chance. Or, you know, if you’re someone who doesn’t mind a few plugged bumper holes and would love a great deal on a Chrysler.