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Howdy, Fam!
Carvana can clearly move metal. Whether it can keep a customer coming back for an oil change is the question Stellantis dealers are asking out loud right now.
Also in today's email:
Dealers are losing an 83% market they don't even realize they're losing
GM and a key union struck a C$1.1 billion deal for Canadian plants amid the tariff standoff
Jim Farley says Ford fired two-thirds of the leaders who thought "good enough" was good enough
Keep Pushing Back,
—Chris with Paul, Kyle & Kristi
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Stellantis Dealers Say the Carvana Strategy Is Missing the Most Important Part
Carvana's seven Stellantis stores can clearly sell cars, one in Arizona became the automaker's highest-volume outpost in the country in a little over a year. What happens after the sale is the part rival dealers say nobody's actually answered yet.
One dealer told Automotive News that a sales manager posing as a customer called a Carvana Stellantis store about a check engine light and was told to just take it to an independent mechanic. "That is just not what our network needs," the dealer said. "You do that, you'll sell someone one car, and you'll never sell them a car again."
The scale of Carvana's reach is real:
in July, a Carvana-owned store in Arizona sold more new vehicles into a small Pennsylvania market 2,000 miles away than the automaker's actual local dealership did.
The first time you go in is when your car breaks down, and you're naturally going to be unhappy.
Regular service, done well, is what turns a one-time sale into a repeat customer. Carvana's model was built to remove exactly that touchpoint.
This is the same tension Mark Miller Subaru's Promise Path tried to solve differently last week, borrowing Carvana's no-salesperson convenience while keeping the dealership, and its service bay, fully attached. Whether that's the difference that matters long-term is exactly what Stellantis dealers are waiting to find out the hard way.
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Dealers Are Losing an 83% Market They Don't Even Realize They're Losing
Franchised dealers capture roughly 20-25% of maintenance and service business nationally. The other 75-80% is going somewhere else, and Rhett Ricart thinks most dealers aren't treating that gap like the opportunity it actually is.
Your commodity dealers like Ford and GM and all the rest, we're only getting 20-25% of our customers. There's 160,000 Pep Boys and Firestones out there, and there's only 17,000 of us. We got to pick up our heels and start going after that business.
Ricart's point ties directly to today's Stellantis story: dealers can't control what gets built or how tariffs move, but service is the one part of the business they fully control, end to end, and it's the part getting the least aggressive attention relative to its size.
Want the full conversation?
🎙️ Listen to today's Automotive State of the Union episode for the complete discussion.
GM and a Key Union Struck a C$1.1 Billion Deal for Canadian Plants
GM and Unifor reached a tentative agreement to invest C$1.1 billion into Canada's auto sector, including a new heavy-duty GMC Sierra line at its Oshawa plant and a commitment not to close its Ingersoll facility, all while the country's auto industry sits at the center of the stalled U.S.-Canada trade talks.
The deal, covering 4,600 union members, is contingent on a worker vote this weekend, and lands directly against the backdrop of Trump's threat to double Canadian auto tariffs to 50% by January 2027, a story we've been tracking closely.
Ford Fired Two-Thirds of the Leaders Who Thought "Good Enough" Was Good Enough
CEO Jim Farley told the Detroit Free Press that the disastrous 2023 Super Duty launch, which left thousands of nearly finished trucks sitting in parking lots, became the catalyst for replacing two-thirds of Ford's manufacturing, supply chain, and engineering leadership.
The cultural shift Farley described:
From finger-pointing to fixing root causes before a vehicle ever reaches a customer. It's already showing up in the numbers, Ford recently ranked #1 among mainstream brands in JD Power's Initial Quality Survey, though the automaker still leads the industry in recalls this year.
Hyundai Motor Group has grown U.S. market share from 8.4% to 11.8% since 2020, more than any other major automaker, and is accelerating a $26 billion U.S. investment plan that could expand its Georgia Metaplant to as much as 800,000 units of annual capacity.
CEO José Muñoz was direct about why: "Tariffs are helping accelerate our localization plan. That's very, very simple."
🚘 Car Stuff
Volkswagen unveiled its first all-electric camper van, the ID. California Cruise, based on the ID. Buzz. It won't be sold in the U.S., but it can power a coffee maker off the battery, so at least somebody's having a good week.
Jeep gave the Recon EV a power bump. The electric off-roader is shipping with 20 more horsepower than originally advertised, and some dealers are already offering discounts on the new model, an unusual combination for a vehicle that just launched. (psst: it also has 20 miles less range)
💰 Not Car Stuff
Scientists buried underwear across Switzerland for science. More than 1,000 volunteers buried cotton underwear nationwide to help researchers measure how biologically active different soils are, the faster the fabric breaks down, the healthier the soil underneath.
A SpaceX rocket stage crashed into the Moon, and NASA got the photos. A discarded Falcon 9 upper stage that hit the lunar surface on August 5 left a fresh 60-foot crater, now visible in detailed images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Ancient Egyptian princesses were buried with real weapons, not just ceremonial ones. New research on royal mummies from Dahshur suggests the weapons buried alongside them may have served a genuine practical purpose rather than pure symbolism.
1897: Thomas Edison patented the Kinetoscope, an early motion picture viewing device that used a peephole for a single viewer, an important early step toward modern cinema.
1881: The first U.S. tennis championships for men were played in Newport, Rhode Island, an event that would eventually grow into the modern US Open.
1957: Malaysia gained independence from British rule, a moment still celebrated annually as the country's National Day.
Thanks for reading, Friend!
