Toyota's Building a 620-Mile EV. We're Not Getting It. Again.
Does anybody else feel like the fattened calf every time some genuinely cool, genuinely affordable automotive tech shows up in every market except this one? Why is America always last to the party? Is it the music? Somebody explain it to me.
No Pressure, Mary: Barra Walks Into the Room That Could Define Her Legacy
Barra's seat at that table isn't symbolic. It's happening the same week Trump signaled he might let Chinese automakers manufacture on US soil, the exact outcome her own industry coalition just publicly asked him not to allow.
Dealers Have Always Been the "Real People" Review. China Is About to Test That.
Rumors that BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu could join Xi Jinping's Washington delegation set off alarms industry-wide. Sen. Elissa Slotkin didn't mince words: Chinese companies are "licking their chops" for US access. A coalition including NADA sent a letter urging the administration to "keep the door firmly shut."
Wil Matthews Bought a Toyota That Never Existed. Here's What He Wants Every Buyer to Know.
Wil Matthews is a professional photographer. He knows what a real photo looks like, and what a real dealership listing looks like too, he'd already spotted dozens of fake ones on Facebook Marketplace before this summer. None of that saved him from paying $36,240 for a Toyota 4Runner that was never sitting on any lot, anywhere.
145 people got a piece of hard news this week that had nothing to do with how well they did their job. CarMax cut 4% of its corporate staff, hitting Richmond, Dallas, Atlanta, and its Edmunds team, the third round of cuts in less than a year after 350 jobs in October and 230 more in January. That's 725 people in twelve months, and it's worth sitting with that number as people before we get to strategy.
Stellantis Is About to Make Your Advertised Price Less of a Race to the Bottom
Starting with 2027 models, Stellantis is joining GM, Mazda, Toyota, Kia, and Hyundai in setting a floor under how low dealers can advertise a new vehicle. The stated goal is transparency. The practical effect is a meaningful shift in how price competition actually works.
Ford Wants Dealers Selling Software. It Should Also Let Them Get Paid For It.
Ford now has 1.6 million paid subscribers across its connected-services business, and Mike Aragon, the executive running it, made clear this week that dealers are the plan, not an afterthought.
Volkswagen Wins the Service-Scheduling Fight Nobody's Watching
Pied Piper's second annual Service Scheduling Effectiveness study checked something most dealerships assume works fine until a customer proves otherwise: can someone actually book a service appointment without giving up?
The FTC Just Told Dealers Exactly What "Price" Has to Mean
The FTC published a full FAQ document on Sept. 15, following the warning letters that went out to 97 dealership groups back in March. This isn't new law, but it's the clearest the agency has ever been about how existing law applies to a car ad.
ASOTU CON West Tickets Are On Sale Now. Here's Everything You Need to Know.
ASOTU CON West lands in Los Angeles on November 18, our first time taking the event outside its usual home base. Public tickets are on sale now, with pre-release access already available to clients of our founding sponsors.
Carvana Turned a 30-Car Dealership Into Stellantis's Top Seller. Here's What That Actually Proves.
Carvana bought Casa Grande Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Arizona back in February 2025. It was moving 30 to 50 new vehicles a month. Today, per Automotive News, it's the highest-volume Stellantis dealership in the country, approaching 1,000 units a month, almost three times the next-highest store.
Duffy's letter, made public Tuesday, accused Ford of "actively intertwining its future with Chinese state-backed enterprises." He argued American companies should "out-innovate competitors" rather than rely on them. Farley's response left little room for ambiguity:
Being Friendly Doesn't Move Dollars per RO. Here's What Actually Does.
Widewail CEO Cuyler Owens walked ASOTU CON attendees through a study matching six months of customer reviews at 350+ franchise dealerships against the actual repair-order revenue behind them. The headline finding is the kind that reshapes how a store trains its team: being friendly isn't the behavior that shows up in the numbers.
The White House Just Called Ford's China Strategy a "Troubling Picture"
Ford has been building its America-first credentials for years, more hourly workers in the U.S. than any other automaker, its own battery plants, its own workforce. The Trump administration just publicly said that story doesn't add up.
Mobile Service Just Crossed From "Early Adopter" to "Everyone's Doing This"
Curbee CEO Amit Chandarana joined the show to unpack what's actually driving that jump, and why the harder problem now isn't convincing dealers mobile service works, it's helping them execute it well.
Used EV Prices Should Have Crashed by Now. They Haven't. Here's Why.
100,000 EVs came off lease in the first half of this year. Another 200,000 are landing in the second half. Every instinct says that supply wave should have crushed used EV prices. It hasn't, and Plug CEO Jimmy Douglas says he knows exactly why.
What Dealers Actually Risk by Partnering with a Chinese Automaker
Dunne has spent years watching China's domestic auto market up close, and he's seeing dealers in markets like Kazakhstan and Russia already courting BYD, Geely, Leapmotor, and Xpeng. His warning isn't about the product. It's about what happens after the honeymoon.
Stellantis Just Told a Journalist It Can't Beat China. It's Joining Instead.
Dunne, longtime China auto analyst and author of the upcoming book Car Wars, joined the show to trace how Stellantis went from manufacturing Jeeps in China to quietly becoming dependent on a Chinese partner for its own global lineup.
Dealership Workers Are Happy. The One-to-Three-Year Crowd Isn't Buying It Yet.
Eighty percent of dealership employees say they're satisfied at work. That number collapses to 64% for anyone with one to three years on the job, and that gap is where CDK's 2026 Workplace Study says the real retention story is hiding.
Bozard Ford Just Put 47 Vans on the Road, and Somehow That's Not Even the Impressive Part
Bozard now runs 47 mobile service units, and according to COO/GM Ed Roberts, they're servicing more vehicles outside the dealership every month than a lot of stores manage to service inside theirs. That's not a typo. That's a whole second dealership's worth of service volume, just, you know, driving around.
Stellantis Dealers Are Sitting on a Service Opportunity Carvana Just Handed Them
Carvana's expansion into new-car sales rattled Stellantis dealers when it first broke. The follow-up conversation landed somewhere more useful: every one of those out-of-market sales is a customer nobody's claimed yet.
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.
