Inventory shortages have dramatically decreased supply, but Americans still want to buy cars. We all know this creates a situation where dealers can charge almost whatever they want for a vehicle. Pickups are always in demand, and you would expect a markup on something like a but this Nissan dealer takes the cake on a Frontier.

I got a tip from a reader who was searching for a cheap pickup in New England and he was flabbergasted as to what his local Nissan store was charging for a used truck!

“I’m currently shopping for a CPO or lightly used two to three year old Nissan Frontier in old man, 2WD, nothing spec. What I have found is absolutely criminal. Using Nissan’s CPO search tool, I found a 2019 S King Cab 2WD 5MT with less than 10k miles on it, priced over 5k more than MSRP when it was brand new. It’s within 10% of buying a 2022 D41 base model King Cab. I called the dealer, and of course the sales manager is not available (probably eating a large sub sandwich). I wanted to find out why a $15k truck is now $25k for no apparent reason other than “the used truck market is crazy right now” answer that I got from the pleasant junior sales girl. Please find the attached pics for reference.”

To recap this is a three-year-old, base model, Nissan Frontier with two-wheel drive and a manual transmission. I can’t imagine this configuration being desirable to anyone but a handful of Jalopnik weirdos, especially in New England where the 4WD would certainly be useful.

Apparently, this Nissan store thinks there is a big market for those weirdos and has decided to market this truck for $5,000 over its original MSRP.

If you look closely at the ad, the original posted price was $28,314, that’s 40 percent over MSRP! I guess the dealership thought that might be a tad too ambitious for a pretty-basic used pickup and adjusted accordingly.

, but it just goes to show how bad buyers have it right now. While deals are difficult they are not impossible. I just had a Toyota dealer in New England offer my client a brand new Tacoma and they took a few hundred bucks off the MSRP. I have to imagine there is a Nissan dealer willing to let a new Frontier go at a reasonable price.

(Tom McParland is a contributing writer for Jalopnik and runs AutomatchConsulting.com. He takes the hassle out of buying or leasing a car. Got a car buying question? Send it to [email protected])