Hyundai has taken the top brand spot in Kelley Blue Book’s 5-Year Cost to Own Awards, while Acura has earned top honors among luxury brands. KBB also recognized 22 segment winners, which were distributed across a fairly  wide array of brands. Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota each had four segment winners, and Buick had three. These […] [Read More]

A new survey from TransUnion again emphasized the value of accurate information available to collectors as a pathway to improve skip-tracing success. Officials found that more than nine in 10 collectors — 95.2 percent to be exact — have improved their right party contact rate since using online databases and sophisticated technology. TransUnion also determined […] [Read More]

Consolidated Asset Recovery Systems (CARS) is hosting a free, one-hour webinar aimed at answering common questions about the purpose and importance of service level agreements (SLA). Garrett Cline, CARS’ director of sales for the Eastern U.S., will lead the session that’s scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. ET on Feb. 16. Cline intends to cover: […] [Read More]

The recent Iowa caucuses are in the books and it’s time to shift the political focus to Tuesday’s New Hampshire primaries. Similar to the tight legislative races vying for each party’s presidential nominations, the Edmunds.com data for New Hampshire shows that many of the state’s new-car buying tendencies are similar to the national averages. Let’s […] [Read More]

The Denver Broncos may have prevailed over the Carolina Panthers to clinch the Vince Lombardi Trophy this weekend, but there were many more competitors vying for viewer attention during Super Bowl 50. And as usual, the competition within the automotive space was particularly potent. Honda’s singing sheep did a fine rendition of Queen’s “Somebody to Love” while […] [Read More]

Franchised dealers have increased their used-car sales for six straight years, according to data from NADA cited in Manheim’s 2016 Used Car Market Report. But one caveat shouldn’t come as a surprise: Used margins are slimmer. In fact, the 25 straight quarters (through Q3) of increasing same-store used unit sales for the public dealership groups is […] [Read More]

Don’t expect to see a huge residual value impact from the decision to transition Scion to the Toyota brand. According to Eric Ibara, Kelley Blue Book’s director of residual values, Scion vehicles tend to hold their value better than others. But the challenge was from increased preference of utility vehicles over cars — something that […] [Read More]

Along with hiring an executive for a personnel role, CarGurus released a study this week identifying where consumers report the best vehicle-shopping experiences as measured by customer ratings of dealerships submitted to the site. Topping the list where shoppers gave the highest percentage of perfect five-star reviews when rating their dealership buying experiences was Nashville, […] [Read More]

The car whose late-model auction values showed the most positive change during the fourth quarter? According to a Kelley Blue Book analysis, it was an electric vehicle:  the Nissan LEAF. This took place, even amid gas prices that tumbled more than 14 percent. Specifically, KBB Auction Values on model-years 2012 through 2014 LEAF vehicles were up […] [Read More]

Collection solutions provider Harvest Strategy Group recently enhanced its senior leadership team with the addition of Jason Nesbit as vice president of business development. The company highlighted Nesbit’s more than 20 years in the ARM industry will enable Harvest to expand the reach of its services to new verticals within the industry and further enhance […] [Read More]