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

Blog Post

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 […]

Blog Post

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 […]

Blog Post

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. […]

Bump

Blog Post

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 […]

Blog Post

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 […]

Video

How to Drive Vehicle Profitability | Live Market View Q2 2024 | vAuto by Cox Automotive

Dealers are feeling a profitability pinch in new and used vehicles as new vehicle supplies grow and potential buyers face their own pocketbook pressure. In this edition of Live Market View, Derek Hansen, Vice President of Operations for Cox Automotive and vAuto, and Erin Keating, Executive Analyst of Economic and Industry Insights for Cox Automotive, […]

Blog Post

A vAuto Veteran’s View of the Evolution and Importance of Performance Management

This Q&A flows from a recent vAuto podcast that featured guest Chris Hanna, the Associate Vice President of Performance Management at vAuto. Chris, who has been with Cox Automotive for 15 years, shared his insights on the role of performance managers and how they help vAuto dealers achieve greater success. His responses have been edited […]

Blog Post

Three Reasons Automated Used Vehicle Pricing is a Bad Idea

I’ve run into a consistent theme in recent conversations with dealers: What do you make of systems that automatically price used vehicles? The question has also led to requests that we change ProfitTime GPS from its current functionality of providing recommended price ranges for individual vehicles to automatically pricing each car. When I ask why […]

Blog Post

Are Your Used Vehicle Prices Right for the Current Market?

With April in the books, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight a feature of the current used vehicle market that, judging from recent conversations with dealers, appears to have been misread or overlooked entirely. I’m talking about the steady decline in used vehicle retail prices since the beginning of the year. In this […]

Blog Post

Automotive Merchandising Trends: What Dealers Need to Know | vAuto

DRIVING SUCCESS IN 2024: MERCHANDISING STRATEGIES FOR DEALERSHIPS The last few years have been a wild ride for the auto market, with unprecedented profits and unpredictable swings. While it’s been a story of extremes, 2024 will start to bring normalcy back to our industry. New car inventory is on the rise, which is expected to […]