Sen. Claire McCaskill previously grilled General Motors chief executive officer Mary Barra about how the automaker investigated and recalled older vehicles with defective ignitions. Earlier this week, McCaskill took aim at David Friedman, deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about the same issue. During a Senate subcommittee hearing that lasted more than […] [Read More]

A former Dominion Dealer Solutions executive joined the team at The Next Up as vice president of sales on Tuesday. Bringing to the company more than 14 years of experience in the automotive industry is Mark Stringfellow, who most recently served as the national sales manager of key accounts for Dominion Dealer Solutions. In his […] [Read More]

In the last five years, the Costco Auto Program has sold approximately 200,000 vehicles through its Select Pre-Owned and Costco Certified Pre-Owned offerings. This year alone, however, Costco is on track to move more than 50,000 SPO/CPO vehicles. As explained by management, the SPO program — a relatively new offering from Costco — consists of cars that are […] [Read More]

With the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration’s online database of vehicle recalls now up and running, the National Automobile Dealers Association is hosting a webinar with a top NHTSA official to highlight how stores can use this Web resource. Designed for dealers and their staffs, NADA highlighted the safety recall webinar will review the purpose […] [Read More]

The record-setting number of recalls this year keeps getting larger as Toyota and Ford rolled out campaigns impacting a combined total of approximately 200,000 units, the larger of the actions being Toyota's. Starting with Toyota, the automaker said it will conduct a recall of approximately 130,000 Tundra Crew-Max Cab and Double Cab pickups from the […] [Read More]

Volkswagen has a new leader for its certified pre-owned program to replace Scott Weitzman, its former general manager of used-vehicle operations who is now chief operating officer at digital marketing firm DealerX. Named the national CPO senior manager at VW is Michael Ashton, who was previously the regional used-car manager for the Northeast for the […] [Read More]

AutoNation has increased both its footprint in the Northwest as well as the number of its approved vendors, with the retailer adding the dealer-direct marketplace DealersLink to that roster.  Starting with its store purchases, AutoNation announced Wednesday it has signed agreements to acquire Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volvo stores in the Seattle-Bellevue market from Barrier Motors.   The move […] [Read More]

The acquisition of dealerships nearly doubled in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. That’s according to The Blue Sky Report from Kerrigan Advisors, along with research gathered from The Banks Report, which highlighted the 95 completed dealership transactions in the first half of 2014, a 75-percent increase over the […] [Read More]

Like their domestic counterparts, the majority of Asian and European brands are posting stronger certified pre-owned sales numbers — including several who just posted their respective best months ever for CPO. Overall, certified sales for Asian brands were fairly static year-over-year in August (down 0.4 percent at 102,154 units), according to numbers from Autodata Corp.; […] [Read More]

Big 3 brands increased their certified pre-owned sales by nearly 20 percent in August and pushed their year-to-date sales above half-a-million units. According to Autodata Corp., domestics sold 77,918 CPO units last month, which was up 19.8 percent year-over-year. Through eight months this year, they’ve increased certified sales by 13.7 percent, moving 545,034 CPO cars. Breaking […] [Read More]