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The best dealer resources from our experts to help dealers solve their toughest inventory challenges.

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vAuto Enhances Conquest, Making it Easier for Dealers to Apply VIN-Specific Incentives to New Cars

As incentives rise and become increasingly complex, Conquest gives dealers the tools they need to correctly—and efficiently—apply the right offers to their vehicles. ATLANTA – September 23, 2024 – Today, vAuto is announcing new functionality that solves another pain point for franchise dealers: managing increasingly complex new vehicle incentives. The Cox Automotive brand achieves this […]

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Elevating Your Game: The Art and Science of an Optimal Inventory Mix

Elevating Your Inventory: The Art of Acquiring Used Vehicles Managing a car dealership is a complex balancing act, especially when it comes to inventory management. The constant fluctuation in demand, supply shortages, and market trends often leave dealers struggling to find that elusive “right mix” of vehicles on their lot. Too much inventory can lead […]

Blog Post

Why Retail Used Vehicle Prices Won’t Rise Like Wholesale Values

Last week, I shared a post that outlined a somewhat odd moment in the used vehicle market, wherein wholesale values have risen steadily for the past two-plus months while retail prices have declined. It’s an odd moment in the market because you’d normally expect to see retail prices follow the trendline of wholesale values in […]

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An End of the Month Gross Profit Reckoning in Used Vehicles?

I have a suspicion that the month of August will look pretty good for dealers as far as used vehicle sales volume, but their month-end gross profit tally will likely be less-than-satisfying if not distressing. My suspicion flows from dealer conversations in the past two weeks where the No. 1 topic of conversation was concern […]

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An Empathy-based Approach for Customers with Negative Equity

One of the most persistent topics of conversation with dealers of late has been the difficulty they experience working with customers who want to trade or sell a vehicle that’s saddled with an out-size level of negative equity. I’ll get to some pointers for dealers to best help customers find a way out of their […]

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Pointers to Help You Play in Today’s Challenged CPO Market

A recent report from Cox Automotive highlights a pain point many dealers will know all too well—if you want to stock one- to three-year-old vehicles, it’s almost impossible to acquire them without stepping up to a price point you may find uncomfortable. The high cost of near-new vehicles owes to the drop in new vehicle […]

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How “Variable Management” is Moving to New Vehicles

Regular readers of my blog know I’ve embraced a “Variable Management” strategy for used vehicles and built a software system, ProfitTime GPS, to support the strategy. The strategy itself flows from a data science discovery that undercuts one of the central principles of traditional used vehicle inventory management—that each vehicle is fresh and full of […]

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ProfitTime GPS in Practice: ‘Start Small’ to Adopt ROI-Minded Used Vehicle Management

Tim Hlavenka, national sales director for the Rick Case Auto Group, says the adoption of ProfitTime GPS and the ROI-minded Variable Management strategy it supports didn’t come easy or happen overnight. “There was push-back in that roll-out,” says Hlavenka, who oversees new and used vehicle sales for the group’s 12 stores in Florida and Georgia. […]

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A View of the Rising Cost of Trade-in Appraisal “Bumps”

As I work with dealers, I’m seeing the return of a practice that largely went away in the past few years as dealers were hungry for new vehicle inventory and consumers were willing to pay MSRP or more to purchase a new vehicle. The practice is familiar to most, if not all, dealers: A customer […]

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How independent dealers can beat the margin crunch with technology and tools | vAuto

After some very profitable years, many dealers are feeling the pinch of shrinking margins and rising costs. In a market that’s changed a lot in just two years, how are independent dealerships supposed to stay ahead of these challenging trends? Unfortunately, the market is what it is, but what dealers can do is take a step […]