As you know, it’s a hard time to be a car buyer. New vehicles are hard to find and those you can find are in limited supply, overpriced, or both. This has made used cars hard to come by and inflated their prices. Not just for basic used cars either, Bloomberg reports that even buyers of high-end cars like Rolls Royces and Bentley are turning to the used market.
With order books full for the next few months, Rolls Royce buyers are having to turn to something I didn’t know existed: the company’s certified pre-owned program called Provenance. Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of it either. The company usually sells only a handful of CPO Rollers. Now sales are up. From Bloomberg:
More than ever, members of the Rolls-Royce elite are choosing to purchase vehicles from the company’s “Provenance”—or highly selective pre-owned—program. “It used to be that one out of three vehicles we sold were Provenance,” said Gerry Spahn, head of communications for Rolls-Royce North America, during a luncheon held for reporters in order to showcase the new cars. “Now, it’s closer to 75%.”
This isn’t some run-of-the-mill CPO plan either, it includes things like a comprehensive multi-point inspection process, personalization options, and a two-year service package.
Rolls-Royce isn’t alone, the whole high-end luxury used market is seeing gains:
At Bentley, sales rose 150% from January to May. Certified-pre-owned sales at McLaren are up only 2% year to date over 2020, a record-year, but the prices those supercars are selling for used are higher than when they were new. “McLaren 765LT coupes are trading on the pre-owned market up to 40% over MSRP, which is staggering,” says Nic Brown, acting president of McLaren North America.
Some rich people like to save money, but a lot of them are impatient. Buying that two-year-old Phantom gets them their vehicle immediately. Rolls Royce’s head of communication acknowledged this to Bloomberg, saying that buying used makes sense for many customers because of “a stronger sense of, ‘I want this now.’”