I live in Anchorage Alaska and our local Dodge dealer has brought up numerous used 2023 GX460’s from Studio City California. They all have very low miles, anywhere between 13-60 miles. Carfax show they are one owner vehicles with no issues. Any idea on why these vehicles were sent to auction with such low miles? Would you avoid them?

 

I'd rock it, I doubt they have any issues. Do you due diligence with a pre purchase inspection naturally.

 

Flood damage comes to mind, which part of CA did they come from?

 

The fact that they're not being sold as Lexus Certified Used is slightly suspicious....

 

Remember, California had one of its wettest years in it's history, where whole inland regions which had once been lakes and had dried up for a hundred years had houses built - whole neighborhoods built on them... and guess what happened? The inland lakes filled up.

I'd bet dollars-to-doughnuts that these are flood-damaged totals. It's a scam.

 

Agree ... Stranger-Danger ... do an extensive title search ... the history to determine if these are an insurance claim write-off ...

Same thing happened when Katrina hit New Orleans ... a crazy number of water damaged vehicles that were written off ... and then title transferred thru multiple states so as to lose their history.

 

Flood damage was my first thought, but the carfax was good (not sure how much that matters). The Dodge dealer who has them bought them at action and had them shipped to Alaska - they said the California dealer was probably overstocked (that doesn’t make sense to me). I had wondered if they may have been used for movies or tv shows since they came from Studio City? Beyond the Carfax, how else could i dig into the history of them?

 

Put the burden on the seller to provide complete disclosure. If they hesitate or do not provide ... walk away ...

 

Sounds strange, as others have already mentioned, I would guess they are flood vehicles.

 

Lots of reasons they could have them. Some of them bad - as mentioned above - but some not. When did they arrive in Alaska? What makes you say they are from Studio City? SoCal had two PGA tournaments in January, so perhaps these were courtesy vehicles. Or they were waterlogged and you'll find fish under the seat. There's no way to know with spending time researching the title history of several of the VINs, and diving inside some of them. You'll get nothing valuable here but conjecture.

Mark

 

The Carfax show they were bought/registered in Studio City CA

 

Courtesy vehicles for an event seems to make the most sense; though why they were not distributed around the country and sold as CPO's is strange. Unless of course the Lexus dealers are already snowed under new 2023's they are still trying to unload.

 

Lexus has been providing trunk money to dealers in California to move GX 460s since the 550s will be arriving shortly on the west coast. This is why dealers like Lexus of Cerritos have been able to provide $11000 discounts on new 2023s.

my guess is a socal dealer decided it was more profitable to just “buy” the car get the trunk money and then sell them rather than wait to sell them on the lot. Gets the inventory out and opens up allocations for the new GX550 which will be more profitable to sell since it’ll be MSRP.

My hunch on what happened there.

 

In either scenario legit or not get a full max warranty with them. GX460's would be brutal to deal with in a flooded scenario due to so many modules along the bottom half of the interior. The front behind each kick panel especially.

 

I think a previous poster was correct. There were a lot of new GX's on dealer lots - especially as Lexus pumped out a ton of cars right at the end of the production cycle. Dealers panicking and selling even at auction. Interestingly, now the inventory is drying up really quickly (for new GX's) and I think the price discounts are not what they were a month ago. Fast forward a few months and I think relatively new GX's will hold their value really well. The last of the V8 goodness that the GX460 was... All this to say, I don't think there is anything wrong with the new cars you are seeing in Alaska.