The Charlotte, N.C., area is the heart of NASCAR and home to two of the nation’s largest dealership groups: Hendrick Automotive Group and Sonic Automotive, both of which have deep lineages in the sport through their respective founders, Rick Hendrick and Bruton Smith. And now another large dealership group whose founder has strong ties to auto racing is […] [Read More]

PAR North America chose an executive with almost two decades of industry experience to be its vice president of sales and client relations. According to a news release distributed on Thursday, the business unit of KAR Global announced the appointment of Ryan Hawley, who will lead a fast-growing team of sales professionals and liaise with […] [Read More]

Toyota venture capital firm Toyota AI Ventures is rebranding and investing another $300 million in emerging technologies and carbon neutrality efforts. The firm will be now known as Toyota Ventures, and the additional investment boost grows its total assets under management to more than $500 million. Further, two early-stage funds — the Toyota Ventures Frontier Fund […] [Read More]

Carvana, which launched a little more than eight years ago, has made its first appearance on the Fortune 500, and says it is one of the quickest tech companies to make the list. In fact, the company said it made the list in the same amount of time as Facebook did. “Based on organic growth […] [Read More]

For your certified pre-owned buyers this year, you might want to keep in mind the brands that fall under the CPO programs Autotrader has honored with the title of top CPO vehicle programs for luxury and non-luxury automakers this year. According to the site, programs from Lexus (luxury) and Kia (non-luxury) stand out in 2021 — something to […] [Read More]

Sonic Automotive is partnering with Dave Ward & Friends Podcast to raise funds for the Houston Children’s Charity. This is a non-profit organization focused on improving the quality of life for Greater Houston's underprivileged, abused and disabled children.  Sonic will be launching a June service lane promotion at its 16 Houston locations to support these […] [Read More]

Ignite Consulting Partners chief legal and compliance officer Steve Levine returned for another visit; this time recapping on the Auto Remarketing Podcast how cathartic it was to host the firm’s compliance training event again in person. Levine also described how buy-here, pay-here dealerships are sharpening their compliance skills again after navigating through the worst of […] [Read More]

Agora Data again used the old adage, “strength in numbers,” to leverage the capabilities of the securitizations market for operations that typically do not have the size or scale to attract investment-community interest. This week, the company announced the successful closing of its second crowdsourced securitization, ACAST 2021-1, on May 27. With the closing of […] [Read More]

Experian’s Q1 2021 State of the Automotive Finance Market report illuminated many attributes about the contracts originated during the opening quarter of the year, including how outstanding balances now are approaching $1.3 trillion as well as metrics based on geography. This week, S&P Global Ratings shared insights about more seasoned paper, discussing how payments tracked […] [Read More]

Digital auto marketplace IAA is growing their leadership team with the hiring of Peg Burr as senior vice president of product management, in an effort to strengthen product development in the global marketplace.  Most recently, Burr was VP and global product portfolio leader for the digital business of Cognizant. Prior to Cognizant, she led global end-to-end […] [Read More]