If you comment, “Okay, Boomer,” you wouldn’t be wrong. This car is not for me. I’m sure it is for a lot of folks younger than me. I have never seen a wing this big on anything sold by CarMax. Does that make it a unicorn? I’m thinking not. I’m also thinking the Subaru WRX’s performance is not increased a whole helluva lot (if at all) by the addition of this gizmo.
The 2023 Subaru WRX didn’t come with a wing at all. This is a one-owner California car, and the one owner not only added the wing but also wrecked it about a year ago. You know who you are. This is an aftermarket unit. So are the Italian wheels, from OZ Racing. They’re legitimate rally wheels. Fan of F1 driver Carlos Sainz, Jr? Back in 1990, his dad “won the Driver’s World Rally in a Toyota Celica 4WD, equipped with OZ wheels,” according to OZ. I can live with the wheels.
The Subaru WRX STi had a wing (above), but it was discontinued for the 2023 model year.
I’m not advocating this car. It was in the results when I was searching for a cheap, fun, manual transmission car. It probably is a cheap, fun car, but there are better choices. For the same price, you can buy an actual WRX STi from CarMax – just a few years older. This base WRX has 271 horsepower, and the STi has 310, the latter running maybe a half-second faster to 60 mph, and maybe in need of the more tasteful (to me) factory wing?
CarMax has 132 Subaru WRX’s for sale as of today. This is the only one with the giant wing, so it’s pretty unique? Better act fast. (Like this car is acting fast?) This 2023 Subaru WRX is currently available here in Stockton, California.
This is an automotive mystery, and I welcome help from anyone and everyone to solve it. My hobby is searching the CarMax website for unicorns, and sometimes that means searching with one attribute or another and seeing what pops up. Are there any V-12’s? Hellcats? What’s the highest mileage car? Lowest? Most expensive and least expensive? Oldest? Newest? The latter drove me to this post. Of the 83,000 vehicles in CarMax’s inventory, about 100 are 2026 models. Intrigued by how “used” 2026 models end up on CarMax lots, I dug deeper. Imagine my surprise to find a dozen nearly identical brand-new (almost no miles) 2026 Nissan Rogues not only at CarMax but also at a single dealership in Turnersville, New Jersey. I had to know more.
January 2026 Update – The number of new Rogues went up to 27, and nine have sold (so far). Most are in Maryland and New Jersey, though some strays have reached Michigan, Missouri, and even El Paso, Texas. Long ago, I was fascinated with the Where’sGeorge tracker for dollar bills. Explains my odd fascination with keeping tabs on these Rogues.
I called the Turnersville, New Jersey, CarMax, identifying myself as a writer on all things interesting at CarMax (a bit of an exaggeration), hoping to ask their sales folks how and why they came on a dozen identical “new” cars. I presume they got them in a batch at an auction, and yet couldn’t imagine why. And why sell them all at the same CarMax dealer – why not disperse them to nearby dealerships? A very nice young saleslady called me back to say she had no idea how this happened, and really, dealerships have no visibility into how cars show up on their lots anyway. I did not believe her and figured she was both clueless and, even if someone at the dealership knew, they weren’t going to tell me.
Next, I called the closest Nissan dealership to that CarMax, Nissan of Turnersville. They’re a seven-minute drive from the CarMax dealer. A gruff but loveable sales manager scolded me repeatedly that there’s no way CarMax could sell “new” cars, and these were probably old, and don’t worry about it. I assured him these were 2026 models, and as far as I can tell, they were never titled and have almost no miles. He said maybe, but if you buy from CarMax, you won’t get Nissan’s 1.9% financing (Salesmen are all alike), and I interrupted to say “not my point – a used car dealer in your backyard is selling a dozen damned near new Rogues in direct competition with yours!” I got his attention and we had a nice chat, and I gave him one of the VIN’s since he seemed intent on following up by then. I got a hint of the New Jersey mob indignation at someone encroaching on your turf and wondered if some car dealers were going to the mattresses. Imagine my disappointment when, a few hours later, I got a text saying,” By the way, if you are interested in buying a new Rogue…”
That was yesterday. Tonight, I started scrubbing the CarMax listings to begin this post and was gobsmacked to find that most of these new CarMax Rogues are moving from Turnersville, New Jersey, to the CarMax in Laurel, Maryland, not far from me. What the hell? For the longest time, the CarMax in Laurel was the last CarMax that sold new cars – Toyotas back then, so I’m wondering if there’s a connection. The web tells me there are no CarMax’s selling new cars anymore. I’m baffled why having a dozen new Rogues at a dealership in Maryland is any better than one in New Jersey. And while I’m doing this rigorous analysis over some Jack and Sprites watching Thursday Night Football, I see there are two more of these 2026 Rogue’s inbound. We are up to 14 now.
I don’t know a lot about Rogues and don’t much care. But of course, I had to dig deeper into this little SUV. It’s made in Smyrna, Tennessee. All of these models have AWD and a 1.5-liter 3-cylinder engine good for 201 horsepower, 228 ft-lbs of torque, and a 0-60 mph in a sluggish 8 seconds. Be aware: CarMax lists some of these as three-cylinder and others as four-cylinder, but they’re all three-cylinder turbos. The sales price is pretty narrow, $27,998 to $30,998.
The mix is eight SV models and six S models, and all eight SV models are actually the next level up Rock Creek trim, with a few more features standard. The Rock Creek models are outfitted with automatic cruise control and Nissan’s best autonomous-driving feature, ProPILOT Assist. As an aside, I’m wondering how much better autonomous driving is on modern (2026) cars compared to my 2021 Mercedes?
The 12 vehicles above popped up in Turnersville, and the two below were listed for Laurel tonight. I’ve added all 14 to my saved folder on my CarMax profile so I can see where the hell these vehicles go next.
For what it’s worth, all of these Rogues were first available in September. All in New Jersey. No mention of fleet or rental. All say the last recorded mileage was maybe “1” OR “2” miles.
Oh yeah, for those unfamiliar, like me, with the trim levels and MSRP for the Nissan Rogue, here you go. Rock Creek is not a trim level you can sort for in the CarMax app, but you can see from the Nissan website below that trim was $4,000 more than the base model, and maybe, since CarMax can’t distinguish, perhaps a bargain? The top-of-the-line trim is Platinum. This ain’t that.
In closing, if anyone can help figure out the dynamics of this peculiar accumulation of Rogue Nissans, I would welcome your input. To help, the stock numbers and VIN’s for the 14 Rogues are below. Thanks again for reading, and I appreciate any help.
Imagine my excitement at seeing a police vehicle for sale by CarMax for the first time. I expected a unicorn for sure… spotlight, cool rooftop antennae, maybe a cage between the driver and the rear seat perps, and a giant motor for high-speed pursuit. I didn’t expect this.
UPDATE – Alas, CarMax changed the listing. It’s now a Charger SXT. Photo at the bottom. 🙁
First, the interior….nothing special at all. A little bland with no gun rack or radio console. The Dodge has WiFi and Apple CarPlay, but that’s about it. The trunk is plenty big for big cop stuff, or suitcases and golf clubs. The back seat shows no blood or vomit stains, so I’m thinking this law enforcement officer was not in the apprehending business. Pretty benign.
The center stack photo below appears to be CarMax’s image capturing what a DUI captive would see. It’s not your eyes.
The disappointment is under the hood – a 3.6-liter six-cylinder barely making 300 horsepower. I was so hoping for at least the 5.7-liter HEMI V-8 with 370 horsepower. Or more. Not a lot, but a lot more than 300. The sedan does have AWD. It hits 60 mph in just over six seconds. Not chasing anyone down in this, although with 30 mpg on the highway, it might outlast a few on a long-distance run. On the other hand, this police car spent its two years in Hilo, Hawaii, racking up 45,000 miles – that’s about 200 laps of the entire island. There are no long-distance drives.
Reading the history report, I was relieved and yet disappointed to see no prior theft. How amusing that would have been. There are no CarMax dealerships in Hawaii, and this car made it to Norco, California, east of Los Angeles and Anaheim, where it dropped $1,000 in price to $22,998. No need for MaxCare on this. Here’s the link, should anyone really be interested.
There is nothing at all wrong with the Jaguar F-Type sports car. I have struggled to get over its shape compared to the sensual XK and XKR, and yet on its own, it’s a legitimate British enthusiast car. While exploring the few manual transmission cars available in the CarMax inventory, I was surprised as hell to find a Jaguar. And when I did, I turned to the web to see how rare these cars are. All extrapolated, but it seems only 4% of Jaguars that made it to the US were manuals, and diving down to F-Types, in the “S” trim, only 100-150 were imported to the US. Here’s one. A unicorn.
Before we get to the drive train, let’s look at the creature accouterments. Or not. CarMax suggests this car has pretty much nothing going on inside and even notes it doesn’t have air conditioning. Bullshit. Amazing to me how far off CarMax can be in its descriptions. Generally, I don’t care, unless a car doesn’t have the options it says it has, in which case it’s overpriced. But what’s more important is that they get it wrong and underprice a car because it’s listed without features it really does have! Love those.
The Jaguar F-Type S is a big hatchback, like the Audi S5? or my 1977 AMC Gremlin?
Let’s get to performance. The Jaguar F-Type S is powered by a 3-liter supercharged V-6 making 380 horsepower. While it wouldn’t seem to have V-8 oomph, it actually zips to 60 mph in less than five seconds and tops out at 170 mph. I didn’t think it would be that fast.
This 2017 Jaguar F-Type S is currently on reserve in Tulsa, Oklahoma. You can track it here. It sold new for $80,000 and is on sale for about 40% of that now. It’s a two-owner, accident-free Texas car for all of its time. Here’s your chance for a rare unicorn. And for this price, you can spring for MaxCare and be out the door for less than $40,000.
It’s been a couple of years since I sold my vintage 1971 Fiat Spider, and from time to time, I wonder if I have it in me to buy and enjoy one more manual transmission car. That sends me down a rabbit hole looking for a cheap CarMax unicorn stick shift (does anyone call them that anymore?) that, in my fantasy world, would be an extra car I could tool around Northern Virginia, but wouldn’t be my only car I’d have to shift up and down the highway on road trips. There’s a blog post in my head comparing a bunch of CarMax manual-transmission cars (how about a Genesis? An Audi? Even a Jaguar?!), but that will inevitably delay this post indefinitely. So let’s just go with one. I’m going to open with a 2016 Ford Focus RS. CarMax has over 80,000 cars in its nationwide inventory today, and this is the only Focus RS. BTW – my first “hot hatch” is at the bottom of this post.
Starting with the unremarkable, the Focus RS’s cockpit doesn’t have much going on. Seat heaters. Bluetooth. Sony sound system. Some nasty stains on the driver’s seat I don’t really want to know about. The same infotainment stack that was in my daughter’s 2015 Ford Escape. Fairly unremarkable.
What makes this car interesting, as opposed to unremarkable, is all things performance and enthusiast-related – a six-speed manual transmission, AWD, and 2.3 turbo four that makes a staggering 350 horsepower. The only four bangers that made more in this era are the Mercedes GLA/CLA 45s with 375. The Ford Focus RS screams to 60 mph in about 4.6 seconds, not far off of pretty much all of my CarMax unicorns: my 2004 Mercedes S55, 2008 Porsche 911, 2010 Mercedes S600, and 2013 BMW M3 – all of which cost me more than this Focus RS.
The 2016 Ford Focus is faster than a comparable Volkswagen Golf R, and yet admittedly not as refined. The Focus was more performance-oriented than the Golf. It sold new for about $37,000. Nine years later, it’s only lost a third of its value. What other manual transmission enthusiast cars could you get from CarMax for this price? How about a Genesis G70? A Mustang GT? A Fiat 124 Spider? All interesting cars, and only the Mustang is as quick. If you want a hot hatch, this is the one. You’ll be alone at Cars and Coffee.
You can find this 2016 Ford Focus RS on its way here to Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s had six owners, but no accidents. And below this photo is my first sort of hot hatch that I’ve never forgotten, after 40 years.
Stock No: 27839125 VIN: WF0DP3TH5G4117993
My 1977 Ford Fiesta. With a 1.6-liter Kent four cylinder, the basis for Formula Ford motor racing way back when, and a whole lotta fun for a used car. Paid $1,500 for this in 1984 and commuted to work in it. Sometimes, I got air vaulting over roads in Montgomery County, Maryland. It’s the German Ford Fiesta. Not the South Korean one of later years. My joy driving this car makes me want to own some modern version of it, hence my enthusiasm for the Ford Focus RS.
