As lenders and trade associations look to get a handle on what the regulatory body might do, a Texas bank and two advocacy organizations joined forces last week to file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in hopes of proving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional. [Read More]

Illinois repossession agents and recovery professionals are bracing for the state’s new Collateral Recovery Act to go into effect. The new law requires agents to become licensed through the Illinois Commerce Commission. The law officially goes into effect on July 1, but states regulators attempted to alleviate agents’ concerns about filling out paperwork to be […] [Read More]

CNW Research acknowledged that hanging onto service business has become tougher for franchised dealers because of outside competitors like tire and quick-lube shops. But CNW president Art Spinella believes dealers have held their own in recent years by offering name-brand tires, special oil change and lube coupons and “drop in” lanes where technicians are paid […] [Read More]

Earlier today, Sonic Automotive announced pricing of its private offering of $200 million in aggregate principal amount of 7.00 percent senior subordinated notes due in 2022 to qualified institutional buyers. Officials explained the notes were priced at 99.110 percent of the principal amount thereof, resulting in a yield to maturity of 7.125 percent in an […] [Read More]

Dealers hoping to shore up their supply of luxury used vehicles are likely to be waiting quite a bit longer. In a recent special report, the National Automobile Dealers Association said the next increase in used luxury supply isn’t expected to happen until 2014. In fact, used-luxury supply is projected to decline 13 percent this […] [Read More]

With many dealers ramping up their online presence and searching for ways to market their store successfully on the Web, it is arguably becoming more and more importantto maintain consistency across advertising mediums, as well as preserving a store’s reputation on the Internet.  In light of this growing issue, Prime Response — a division of […] [Read More]

With more consumers turning to mobile devices for vehicle shopping purposes every day, many dealers are choosing to take advantage of this marketing space. That said, AutoMotion — a developer of mobile apps for dealers — revealed today improvements to its platform technology, which the company contends will increase flexibility  for clients. Commenting on the […] [Read More]

In the midst of a busy week, Black Book’s editorial team picked up on an unexpected trend when discussing the wholesale market with a commercial account representative. Managing editor Ricky Beggs indicated that he and the rest of the Black Book team continue to see an increasing level of no sales, overall. “But not every […] [Read More]

Under a partnership between EasyCare and Carfax announced Monday, Carfax Vehicle History Reports will automatically be included in the CoVideo video email tool from EasyCare. This means that dealers who use EasyCare CoVideo and Carfax can immediately pass this information along to customers on their websites or through personalized videos sent in response to Internet […] [Read More]

Though not expected to show as dramatic an improvement as the new-vehicle market, used-car sales are projected to wrap up the month ahead more than 6 percent of June 2011, according to TrueCar.com. The firm is predicting 4.77 million used sales for June, which would be a 6.3-percent improvement from a year ago and a […] [Read More]