Crafty Americans Are Making Tens Of Thousands In Profit On The Dieselgate Buy-Back Scheme

A number of people in the US are apparently buying up large quantities of diesel Volkswagens and selling them back to the German company for a massive profit. No, really.

According to a Jalopnik feature, certain enterprising Americans are taking out huge loans in order to buy as many used diesel VWs as possible; specifically those qualifying for the dieselgate buy-back deal. They then sell them back to the company for thousands of pounds’ worth of raw profit per car.

Dealers who simply want undesirable stock off their forecourt are selling diesel Golfs, Jettas and more at rock-bottom prices, allowing private individuals to take them and sell them direct to their maker. Genius.

One of two traders quoted who asked not to be named said that he would make around £48,000 ($60,000) profit from selling 10 used VW TDIs. Another has bought ‘substantially more’ than 25 cars and expects to make an average of about £4400 ($5500) per car he sells back to Volkswagen. At present he’s buying as many as 10 relevant cars per day.

The second ‘hoarder’ apparently acted on a hunch last summer and began cashing in every asset he had in order to free up funds for buying these cars.

And the most amazing thing about this is that, according to the wording of the buy-back agreement, it’s perfectly legal. There’s a grey area over whether and how the ‘income’ should be taxed, though, which is one reason why the traders want to remain anonymous for now.

Not that it’s stopping people. One of the canny VW traders has been told of another person whose personal collection of buy-back-qualifying VWs stretches well into four figures. That’s potentially millions of dollars of cold profit in exchange for filling out some annoying forms a few thousand times.

The feature makes for fascinating reading if you have time to go through the whole thing. We reckon there might suddenly be more people doing this themselves…