After rocketing past the 20-percent mark for much of the winter, the leasing market made a “reversion back to normal levels” during March and the first few weeks of April, according to J.D. Power and Associates senior director Thomas King, who shared some insight on Friday with Auto Remarketing about the leasing trends spotted through […] [Read More]

Thanks largely to the negative impact of surging gas prices on pickup truck volume, overall auction volume during the first quarter was 8.6 percent softer than the year-ago period, according to the latest Auction Industry Report from the National Auto Auction Association. This drop follows a 2-percent year-over-year upswing during the final quarter of 2010. […] [Read More]

As franchise dealers brace for dwindling supplies, Edmunds.com’s April new-vehicle sales forecast reflected the softening figures stemming from the Japanese disasters. The site thinks April new-unit sales, including fleet sales, are expected to be approximately 1,171,000 units, a 19.3-percent increase from April of last year, but a 6.0-percent dip from March. Analysts believe retail sales […] [Read More]

Mazda North American Operations announced last week it has gone in-house to find a senior vice president for the U.S. operations group, a newly created entity within MNAO focused on the U.S. market. Robert Davis, MNAO’s former senior vice president of research and development, customer service operations and quality, was chosen for the newly created position designed to […] [Read More]

The National Automobile Dealers Association recently revealed the first OEM to work in partnership with NADA University on an exclusive training program. By subscribing to NADA University online, association officials last week said Mercedes-Benz USA will equip its dealer contact team with 24/7 online access to a vast collection of interactive training courses, Webinars, data, […] [Read More]

Late last week, Westlake Financial Services revealed its top auctions for the first quarter and many came out as repeat winners. The choices for top overall auctions went to Manheim Nevada, Norwalk Auto Auction and Brasher’s Salt Lake City Auto Auction. Westlake again tapped ABC Birmingham as its top service auction, while keeping Dealers Auto […] [Read More]

Nissan North America switched around some sales roles, as well as positions in business planning, parts and service in moves that became effective this past weekend. The automaker tapped Richard Latek as regional vice president for Midwest region of the Nissan sales division. The OEM also appointed Walter Burchfield as director of business planning, parts […] [Read More]

Calling fiscal 2010 a “year of change” in the auto market compared to the “year of contraction” in 2009, the president and chief executive officer of Calgary-based Quorum Information Technologies pointed to a number of strides the company made in its recently completed fiscal year. CEO Maury Marks stressed that Quorum would continue to expand […] [Read More]

Vehicle-sharing company car2go made its Canadian debut this week in Vancouver, and company officials said that Canadian members will be able to enjoy a fleet of 225 “car2go edition” smart cars beginning in June. Car2go Canada Ltd. is a subsidiary of Daimler North American Corp. Here is how car2go is designed to work. Officials call […] [Read More]

During March, Canada’s wholesale prices showed the most dramatic sequential gain in nine months and also jumped by more than 13 percent year-over-year, according to the latest RVI Market Update. Specifically, RVI Group indicated that the RVI Used Car Price Index was 0.998 in March, representing a 3.2-percent increase from February and a 13.7-percent year-over-year hike. The […] [Read More]