Brand loyalty and general faithfulness are two qualities that seem to be less and less appreciated these days. That’s perhaps no more evident than in the case of Jason Smith, a die-hard Mopar fan who claims he’s no longer the Dodge enthusiast that he once was. Smith contacted Carscoops to share his story, revealing that a dealer required him to purchase a Charger Super Bee to secure a Demon 170 allocation, and then took it away when he refused to accept a $100,000 markup.
Smith isn’t just a hardcore Dodge fan by name alone. Back in 2016, he bought not one but two products from the brand. That included a 100th anniversary Challenger and a RAM 3500 pickup truck. In 2018, he plopped down the cash to obtain a widebody Hellcat.
In fact, his relationship with the dealer in question, Lithia Dodge in Billings, MT, was so close that he was invited to meet the team at the rail yard when the car came in. Smith drove the car off of the freight car himself and then to the dealer for delivery prep.
More: Dodge Promises Challenger Demon 170 Orders Sold At MSRP (LOL) Will Get Priority Scheduling
Buy A Charger Super Bee And Get First Dibs On A Monster Challenger
Then in 2022, he reached out to his dealer again in hopes of scoring a 1,000 hp widebody Challenger. Smith says that though no such factory product existed, his contacts told him that they’d keep him in the loop.
That’s when the shenanigans started as he tells us that in the fall of 2022, representatives at Lithia told him that if he’d purchase a Dodge Charger Super Bee then he’d get first dibs on a an upcoming monster muscle car that ended up being the Demon 170. That’s right, Smith had to put down a non-refundable deposit on a Charger Super Bee to get priority access to the Demon. That’s a shady move all by itself considering that the only brands known for such antics are those in rarified air like Ferrari.
While the nitty gritty of that deal went down in person, messages between Smith and the dealer show that when Smith brings up that deal, the dealer doesn’t refute it. Smith felt like buying an extra car, even one that he didn’t really want, would help him secure his ultimate goal, the ultimate Dodge muscle car. So he made a series of payments, $8,000 in total (recipes below) to Lithia to secure that Charger.
Yay! The 1,025HP Challenger. That’ll Be $200k – Thank You Very Much
Dodge then revealed the Demon 170 on March 20th and Smith got excited. The time had finally come. A factory-built 1,025 HP Challenger to go into his collection. The excitement was short-lived though. After reaching out to the dealer representative on March 24th, he received the following response.
“Good Morning! Thanks for reaching out. It was nice but fast I just got back from Vegas this am. I might have one available I am going to charge 200k for it, do you want if available?” Understandably, Smith wasn’t happy with such a greedy response, especially considering his own loyalty to this dealer over the years.
We’ve seen his full exchange with the sales rep in which he says: “I really didn’t want the car I had to order to get a shot at the car (the Demon 170)… If I was informed that I would be asked for $100k over MSRP then I would not have even considered putting money down.” The dealer’s response is comically greedy and the furthest thing from customer-focused.
In it, the representative, responds that, “Our markup will then be $65k… from the business aspect for the company, not marking it up… is possibly taking profits from our company as a whole.” We would imagine that’s the last way that automakers want their dealers to treat their customers but Dodge has been silent with regard to condemning these practices.
We get it, markups happen, and dealers couldn’t charge them if the entire customer base banded together and agreed not to pay any more than MSRP. Still, this goes beyond a wild markup. This dealer, and others that behave in a similar way risk damaging brand loyalty for the long term over a chunk of change up front.
‘I Will Never Buy Another Dodge Again’
For Smith, it’s ruined what was a great relationship not just with Lithia Dodge but with Dodge in general. “I will never buy another Dodge again,” he tells Carscoops. It’s not hard to see why he’d feel that way.
A large part of the draw of a Demon 170 or the rest of the Hellcat family for that matter is the performance per dollar factor. When the price gets doubled or in some cases more than doubled, that value goes way down. “It takes the fun out of it… for months I’ve been psyched about it,” says Smith.
We had previously reached out to Dodge about the wild markups on the Demon 170 and they responded with statements that are far weaker than their tough talk at the launch of this car. We have contacted both Dodge and the dealer in question regarding Smith’s case and will update this article if we receive a response.
UPDATE: Dodge got back to us to let us know that the customer has now received his refund. Mr. Smith confirmed that with us as well. Dodge also repeated what we’d already reported about how it says that Demon 170s sold at or below MSRP get priority production scheduling.
