Your experience in seeing that 50K add-on nonsense only verifies the 50K+ figures that some other posters in Car Chat have also reported seeing at upmarket/luxury-car dealerships. I think Steve remarked at seeing something similar at his own Mercedes shop in suburban MD.

Even at my own Chevy/Buick/GMC shop, for standard, Run-of-the-Mill everyday appliance-vehicles (Equinox, Terrain, Encore, etc...) almost everything is marked up 5K or more. If I bought or ordered something today (which, of course, I'm not in the market for right now) I could probably get a better deal than that as a several-times-repeat customer, but good luck to a stranger or first-time customer.

Besides the computer-chip-shortage, one thing that could (?) be adding to the shortage of new vehicles (although it is at least partly-hearsay, and not necessarily fact) are the stories I hear of cargo ships off the coast that can't unload the new vehicles that have on board (or are unloading them at a slower rate) because of a shortage of dock-workers. The Encore GX that I have, for example, had to come all the way across the Pacific, from Korea, on a ship, then, depending on where the ship docked, some distance over land to my dealership....which also involves trucking or railroad-workers. We could debate the actual reasons for the shortage of workers, but, at least on my part, it might involve some political discussion, so I'll avoid it.

 

My neighbor just sold his “old” AMG G63. Had it for couple years, put 30k miles on it and still got $30k over what he paid for it.