Champions will be crowned soon in professional basketball and hockey. And this summer, champions among professional and aspiring automotive technicians will be decided, too. The U.S. Auto Tech National Championship (USATNC) is back. Garage Gurus, the training and support platform from Tenneco’s DRiV group, and the University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH) are once again joining […] [Read More]

In honor of baseball heating up, send in the closer. Atul Patel is the CEO and co-founder of Orbee, a leading provider of customer experience middleware for car dealerships. He’s also the Day 1 closing keynote speaker at Canada’s Used Car Week next month in Toronto. He joins the Auto Remarketing Podcast to talk about […] [Read More]

Back to the technology space for the latest M&A move in the automotive industry. Late on Monday, dealer management system software provider DealerBuilt announced the acquisition of Oplogic, a comprehensive CRM solution provider for dealerships. Executives said the acquisition enhances DealerBuilt’s suite of solutions to include Oplogic’s intuitive tools for desking and digital retailing, lead […] [Read More]

Wholesale prices continued to soften as the industry speeds toward Memorial Day weekend, with Black Book noticing declines at about the same rate no matter the vehicle age. Analysts pegged the overall value decrease at 0.13% during the week that closed on Saturday. Black Book shared dissected data in its latest installment of Market Insights […] [Read More]

For certified pre-owned vehicle sales in April, it wasn’t all good news and it wasn’t all bad. According to a Cox Automotive analysis of Motor Intelligence data, there were 214,684 CPO sales last month. That was down 4.2% year-over-year and 6% softer than March, but year-to-date sales through April are beating year-ago figures by 6%, […] [Read More]

Tom Hudson might not be practicing consumer finance law on a daily basis nowadays, but accolades continue to be given to the founding partner of Hudson Cook. On Tuesday, the National Automotive Finance Association announced that Hudson has been named the inaugural recipient of the Jack Tracey Pinnacle Award, which recognizes individuals who have made […] [Read More]

The Ed Morse Automotive Group continues to expand in Illinois, announcing Monday it has purchased its third store in Henry County in recent weeks. The group bought Motor City Chevrolet GMC in Kewanee, Ill., from Eric Ellenberger in a deal brokered by Performance Brokerage Services. It will be renamed Ed Morse Chevrolet GMC. Ed Morse […] [Read More]

Chris Holzshu says vehicle affordability continues to be a focus for consumers as interest rates for new and used vehicles have increased three percentage points since last year. Factory incentives “have yet to match relative demand,” said Holzshu, who is executive vice president and chief operating officer for Lithia & Driveway. “However ... early recovery in new-vehicle inventory and most domestic and luxury nameplates, modest increase in incentives, strong used vehicle trade-in values [and] a decrease in the average amount financed, leave consumers’ monthly payments relatively flat year-over-year,” Holzshu said. Holzshu made his comments during Lithia’s first quarter 2023 earnings call that took place on April 19. Although the company reported the highest first-quarter revenue in company history ... [Read More]

One of the consequences of harvesting high-margin sales, while market prices are sky high, is that future equity positions can be put at risk. That is precisely what is unfolding as dealerships assess their prospects for growth between now and the middle of the decade. J.D. Power research shows that approximately 24 million buyers purchased […] [Read More]

Next up on our series of podcasts from April’s Auto Intel Summit & NRC Spring Summit is a panel discussion, moderated by Cherokee Media Group’s Joe Overby, that features Jai Macker of EBlock, Terence Rasmussen of CarMax, Jason Ferreri of OPENLANE and Sawyer Walker of America’s Auto Auction. Titled “Balancing Brick & Mortar + Digital […] [Read More]