Howdy, Fam!

Love this one out of Brenham, Texas. Last year, the team at Appel Ford set out to collect 400 pounds of food for neighbors in need, and they blew past it with more than 800 pounds.

So this year, owner Jon Hill raised the bar to 1,200 pounds, all headed to the Faith Mission Food Pantry in Washington County.

And they're not alone. More than 3,600 Ford dealers worldwide are working to beat last year's record of 1.7 million pounds through Ford's Building Together initiative.

Keep it up, Ford fam!

Keep Pushing Back,
—Chris with Paul, Kyle & Kristi

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On Friday, we previewed a third quarter that Cox expected to push Detroit's share to a record low. Now the results are in, and most of the forecast held. One prediction didn't.

All three Detroit automakers slipped, while Honda, Hyundai, and Kia grew. But the headline Cox expected didn't happen: Ford held off Hyundai Motor Group by about 3,500 vehicles.

Hybrids drove the gains. Electrified models, mostly hybrids, made up 58% of Toyota's September deliveries, and RAV4 Hybrid sales jumped 123% in the quarter. Even Ford felt it, with Maverick sales up more than 20% and executives seeing "more demand on the hybrid powertrain, including on the F-150."

Ford's decline came partly from phasing out the Escape and Lincoln Corsair, while GM's was driven by sharply weaker EV sales, with the Equinox EV down 92%. Overall, the market slipped 0.4% for the quarter, according to GlobalData.

Hybrid supply is tight, with some Honda hybrids under 30 days. If you have them, sell them with confidence. If you don't, know exactly when the next ones arrive.

Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles, up 1.3% from the second quarter and above analyst expectations, while Rivian delivered 19,248, up from 12,194. Tesla's deliveries are still down 2.1% from a year ago, though.

Globally, the shift is moving faster: plug-ins hit 27% of new-car sales worldwide in August, led by small, affordable EVs like the Geely Xingyuan and BYD Seagull.

Auto repair costs have risen about 60% since January 2019, nearly double overall inflation, according to St. Louis Fed data.

Calibrating driver-assistance cameras can add 37.6% to a collision repair, and one Brooklyn shop says a single calibration machine costs $28,000.

That complexity is why GM's new 30 Under 30 program matters: the industry is short about 37,000 trained technicians a year, and nominations close Oct. 30.

Traffic to Toyota.com is down about 20% as shoppers turn to AI for research, so Toyota is building FAQ-style content for AI models and auditing what they say about the brand.

Our two-minute test for dealers: type your domain into an incognito browser without the "www," and make sure it lands on your homepage.

Your service drive is already full of used inventory.

Join us Wednesday, October 7th at 2:00pm EDT as Scott Pettitt from Del Grande Dealer Group walks through the process his team uses to find and acquire vehicles across both service and sales.

He gets into appraisal consistency, customer conversations, and the operating habits that helped the process stick across multiple rooftops.

If your trade strategy changes depending on who is working, give this one 30 minutes of your time.

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