BOO!! 👻
Happy Halloween, fam!
We know you’ve got important things to get to, spooky oil changes, undead coffee, cursed popcorn, etc.
But don’t forget to send us some pictures of your festivities!
Check out today’s Automotive State of the Union episode with Paul, Nathan, and Chris for a little of our plans and a story about donuts.
Keep Pushing Back,
—Paul, Kyle, Chris & Kristi
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ICYMI
On Monday, we opened with Matthews Auto Group's Walk-a-Thon, where a record 3,027 walkers chose their own children's charities and raised $126,466. Then came the payment math: JD Power projected October's average new-car payment would rise 2.6% to $823, and Edmunds found buyers rolling negative equity paying $952, or $165 more a month. Incentives climbed 13.1% to $3,304, giving dealers some room to work. We also rode along with a $28,995 Chevy Bolt through the Deep South's charging desert, because at those payments, an affordable EV belongs in more conversations on your floor.
On Tuesday, Bain's survey of more than 12,000 buyers showed 9 in 10 still finish the deal in a store, even after shopping online and with AI. CDK's September numbers showed what happens once they walk in: buyers calling the credit application easy fell from 70% in August to 56%, and paperwork slipped from 68% to 64%. We shared both because buyers are still choosing you, and the visit is testing their patience. We also followed the California dealers' Scout lawsuit into discovery and celebrated three 40 Under 40 honorees we know well.
On Wednesday, GM answered its dealers' calls for hybrids: the Chevy Traverse, Buick Enclave and GMC Acadia are headed to its Lansing Delta Township plant, with a $500 million EV grant redirected to help pay for it. GM's U.S. share slid from 17.4% to 16.6% through nine months as Toyota and Honda gained, and there's still no launch date. Our suggestion: start a list of customers who left for a hybrid. We also covered a study tying entrepreneurship to a 10% lower risk of premature death, and why ownership matters in every role at your store.
On Thursday, Brattleboro Subaru's Trunk or Treat (and 240 cider doughnuts) kicked things off. Then came our Q3 earnings scorecard: Carvana's net income rose 84% to $483 million on a record 217,385 retail units, and Ford is holding F-150 supply at 55 to 60 days against a typical 80 to 100. The Fed held rates, and Lotlinx showed used units sold with a markdown climbing from 41% to 47%. One Texas dealer summed up the pressure: a $20,000 car's $400 payment is now $450.
On Friday, we followed the money behind Group 1's $1.3 billion Hennessy purchase. The group has sold three stores for $235 million with four more pending, and its CFO called them "poorer-performing stores." Group 1 expects $625 million to $675 million from sales by mid-2027, which means buying opportunities for the groups on the other side of those deals. We also looked at Lithia's AI service agents, which lifted pre-sales on AI-booked appointments from near zero to an estimated 10% to 11% by asking every customer, every time.
Dealers Are Missing the Biggest Opportunity With AI
Picture your best salesperson getting ready for a callback: CRM, DMS and call logs spread across five screens, piecing together one customer’s story by hand. Conversica CEO Mike Gilson told us that’s exactly what top performers are doing right now. His case is simple.
AI is better at the assembly job, and your people are better at the part shoppers still drive in for, which is trust. Hand off the tab-juggling, and your best closers get their time back for the conversation itself.
Kyle put it this way:
“[I]f we just shorten the distance to that and meet them where they’re at, people will slow down enough to look us in the eye.”
Catch the full conversation before Monday’s sales meeting. Your team’s eyes will thank you for closing a few tabs.
Raffi Mouchmouchian was selling Dodges when a 30-day break from the dealership more than tripled his following. Today he's just shy of 550,000 Instagram followers and helps dealerships make content of their own. On The Dealer Playbook, Michael Cirillo asked him whether anyone can really do this. Raffi said yes, with one rule:
Copy the concept. Make the delivery your own.
His starter plan for a hesitant salesperson is refreshingly low-tech: walk to the nearest car, say what you love about it, admit the one thing you don't, and post the same video everywhere without re-editing it for each platform. That bit of honesty about the headlights or the seats is what makes shoppers believe everything else you said.
Send this one to the salesperson on your team who's been "about to start posting" since spring.
A sold car can still become an expensive problem after the customer leaves.
Wrong registration fees. Missing signatures. Out-of-state paperwork. A trade with a title issue nobody caught soon enough.
DLRdmv is built around cleaning up that part of the deal. Their platform handles title and registration across all 50 states, calculates jurisdiction-specific fees, generates the right forms, connects with 20+ DMS providers, and gives dealers real-time visibility into where the paperwork stands.
That's why we're glad to have DLRdmv joining us at ASOTU CON West on November 18.
If delays, write-offs, or out-of-state deals are still eating time at your store, find the DLRdmv team in LA and bring them your most frightening example to fix. 👹
What does Halloween 2026 look like in six numbers?
Start with the candy bag. The same 100 pieces that cost $9.91 in 2021 run $16.96 this year, according to Finder. Shoppers are celebrating anyway: the NRF expects a record $13.5 billion in spending, and somehow a centipede is the year's hottest pet costume.
Happy Halloween, Fam. Drive safe out there tonight. 🎃
Nevada joins the Union as the 36th state, earning its “Battle Born” nickname by arriving in the middle of the Civil War (1864).
Work on Mount Rushmore officially wraps after 14 years, with about 450,000 tons of rock blasted off the mountain (1941).
The first crew bound for the International Space Station launches from Kazakhstan, and people have been living in orbit ever since (2000).
