🌻 Spring Market Declines

TOGETHER WITH

For those of you wondering, yes, we really mean it when we say we love the retail automotive industry. Definitely the cars (did you see those concepts in the email yesterday...goodness 🔥), but mostly the people! That's you! Thanks for being a part of our extended fam and serving communities around the nation every day.

Keep Pushing Back-Paul, Kyle, & Chris

DEALERS

Gault Hosts a Scavenger Hunt for Nonprofits

Gault Toyota in Endicott, NY is excited to get their community moving and motivated for charity with their first-ever Gault Gives Back Scavenger Hunt.

With a jackpot of up to $33K, all participants need to do is find all five hidden clues. The hunter who discovers them all will receive a $2K bounty and have the ability to select up to five charitable organizations to split the remaining funds.

“I wanted to do something with nonprofits to get people outside and moving around. We live in a great community with a lot of great nonprofits that need our support,” said Allan Eagles, President of Gault Auto.

The first clue will be revealed on May 1st in either their Chevrolet, BMW, or Toyota showrooms, and hints for deciphering clues early can already be found on Gault's website. If you’re local to Endicott, join the adventure and happy hunting!

Telling it like it is - Two things the world needs more of -- love and treasure hunts. Gault is providing both!

AUTOMOTIVE

Spring Is Ending Early For Used Cars

The Manheim Used Vehicles Value Index is slowing down after three months of growth. The index is 2.7% lower than a month ago and down 4% year-over-year. Cox Auto says predictable seasonal adjustments account for some of the drops, but with wholesale prices going up as of April 15, the spring market is ending.

Prices are dipping a little quicker than the flowers are blooming.

The Federal Reserve's Beige Book shows the economy is similarly putting along, with some minor declines. With some downturns, consumer spending is mostly flat, but prices show moderate growth. Travel and tourism increased significantly, while manufacturing and transportation dipped with consumer and business loan volume.

The broader economy is not giving people the incentive (or confidence) to trade in their ride. Repair it? Yes. Replace it? No.

Dale Pollak spoke about a used car business "profit coma" in his recent "How I See It" blog post. At moments of market change, especially predictable changes like the end of the spring market, dealers need to evaluate their strategy to ensure they have the right cars, prices, and marketing. Failure to do so will burn up those pesky profits we keep hearing about.

"Fishing with yarn is easier than digging for worms, but fish don't knit." -A wise old man saying we just made up.

Telling it like it is - Used prices are going down, people are traveling more, and the time to update your strategy is now, also later, and then again a little later after that.

TOGETHER WITH QUANTUM5

Dust Off Those Skills!

The days of touchless sales are over, but that doesn't mean we should add friction (See what we did there?)

Things are changing, and training is key to ensuring your team doesn't lose touch (we did it again!) with what your customers expect from their buying experience.

Quantum5's Frictionless Sales program teaches your team how to adapt to the post-pandemic market to sell more effectively by creating relationships that grow their understanding of individual customers.

Andy Wright of Vinart Dealerships shared why his team partnered with Quantum5 to build that level of adaptability into their business.

Find out what they can do for your team today!

ASOUND THE ASOTU-VERSE

Tell A Friend, Win A Prize

We’re so much more than just pocket candy! We’re brain candy (have you seen our hot takes on the latest news?), heart candy (we’ll hit you right in the feels, we ain’t scared), and of course eye candy (we’re talkin’ memes and gifs galore, my friends).

Dig us? Share us! Just use the unique referral link at the bottom of this email to invite others to join our Daily Pushback newsletter, and each week, the person with the most referrals will win a prize. We’ll give out a big, BIG prize at the end of the program to the most overall referrals.

This week’s prize is a ticket to Live Tonight with ASOTU in Atlanta, GA!

AUTOMOTIVE

Quick Bites: Stealth, Reservations, Hybrids, and Milestones

🥷🚘📦

Customers are receiving delivery of Lucid's blacked-out "Stealth" Air EVs. Year over year, deliveries were up 290% for the brand in Q1. Profits will surely increase as delivery of the $3,000 "Stealth" options continue to go out.

✅💰🕘

VinFast says it received 3000 reservations for its $23K VF 5 Plus EV SUV within nine hours of opening orders. Since hitting the US market, the company has cut prices to compete with Tesla. The Vietnamese company says the debut of its most affordable EV will help them attract new customers and overcome steep competition in a shifting market.

🏃‍♀️⛽️🔋

Toyota says it's updated its attitude toward the Chinese EV market from *wince* to *cringe*. The company revealed a collection of EVs as part of a plan to urgently reconnect with its customer base in China. They are not abandoning hybrids anytime soon. The Prius Prime plug-in will hit the US market in May as a more "practical electric vehicle."

🗓️📈⚡️

California has reached its 1.5M EV sales milestone two years ahead of schedule. The rapid success follows various incentive programs, infrastructure developments, and policy-making that have attracted automaker investment and consumer interest.

TL; DR - Like the Easter Bunny, Lucid is delivering things that are hard to find. VinFast is taking affordability personally. Toyota and EVs are getting serious, but they are still friends with hybrids. California EV/hybrid sales are ahead of schedule.

CULTURE

Reader's Digest

A bunch of bookworms hosted the 43rd Annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes on Friday at the University of Southern California. The awards recognize exceptional literary excellence and celebrate the highest quality of writing from authors at all stages of their careers and across all genres.

The Book Prizes ceremony was a prequel to the weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books, the nation’s largest literary festival, which brought together hundreds of writers and storytellers, and thousands of fellow bibliophiles.

The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual list of the most challenged books in libraries in the US, revealing that demands to censor books rose by 38% year-over-year in 2022, the highest level ever recorded.

There have been a number of recent political moves in the US to restrict the books available in public and school libraries.

Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada, President of the ALA, says it used to be that titles were challenged when a parent or other community member saw a book in the library they didn't like, but times have changed. “Now we're seeing organized attempts by groups to censor multiple titles throughout the country without actually having read many of these books,” she says.

Thank goodness vampires haven’t been banned (…yet). In fact, you can even get them delivered straight to your inbox!

Get ready to sink your teeth into the Dracula Daily, a free newsletter that will be sent out between May 3rd and November 7th following along the same timeline as the letters, diary entries, telegrams, and articles that make up the missive-driven novel. It’s a great way to digest the whole story in bite-sized pieces.

Telling it like it is - Every book should have at least one vampire. Well, maybe not the phonebook...

Quick Hits

• Bed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will soon begin closing all of its 360 stores. 🛑 

• Evil Dead Rise grabs $40M on its opening weekend. 🧟 

• China prepares to test 3D printing habitats for the moon. 🌜 

• It is tick season and several states are warning people to be extra cautious. 🪲 

History

• 1901: New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates.

• 1953: Watson and Crick publish article on the structure of DNA, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.”

• 1983: Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit 11 years after its launch.