QOTD: Would You Pay $10,000 Over MSRP for a Kia Telluride or Hyundai Palisade?

How hot are the Hyundai Palisade and Kia Telluride? Apparently, hot enough for dealers to ask significantly more than MSRP. Tom McParland of Jalopnik recently discovered this phenomenon when his clients began telling him about their experiences at Hyundai and Kia dealers. Initially, my attempts to replicate what he found were unsuccessful. Then I went to CarGurus and found exactly what he described. What is going on here?

Dealer markup usually applies to specialty vehicles like the Mustang GT500 or Toyota Supra, and maybe even the Ford Raptor. We’re apparently in a strange new world where three-row crossovers are making people lose their minds and vastly overpay for something that will be worth less than half of the original asking price in about three years. To me, the craziest thing about these markups are where they’re located. These aren’t dealers in small markets. Bohemia, New York is on Long Island. There are probably at least 20 Kia dealers between there and New Jersey. And that’s being conservative. Toledo also baffles me. It’s a well populated metropolitan area. I imagine there are at least several Kia dealers in the region, right?

Everything I’ve read seems to indicate Hyundai grossly underestimated the demand for both crossovers. That doesn’t justify the markups. But perhaps there are actually people out there paying these insane prices? Hard to say. More realistically, these greedy dealers are simply using it as a starting point to get to MSRP.

They’re not the only three-row crossovers with jacked up prices. The Explorer ST is apparently hot too.

By contrast, it seems regular XLT Explorers are selling for far below sticker. Perhaps Hyundai should borrow a page from Ford’s book and start high. If demand for the Koreans remains high, they may do just that.