Bowers on Challenging Carvana, San Martin on Dealership Design, Wood on Stocking | Daily Dealer Live

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Daily Dealer Live!

I'm your host, Sam Darkin. Thanks for choosing to be here this Wednesday,

February 9th, 2026. And welcome to this first week post-NADA, where that NADA hangover is real.

The free money era has gone. Payments are up, grosses are tightening, and AI, it's either

well your biggest opportunity or your next expensive mistake. Today, we've got operators

who aren't guessing. They're executing Matt Bowers, Miguel, Martin, and Shane Wood join us

to break down what's actually working today in February 2026. No fluff, no vendor pitches,

just real dealer strategy. But first up today, today's industry headlines.

First up today, used car prices have settled into a permanently higher range, and that's how

dealers buy, stock, and sell inventory in 2026. During a presentation at last week's JD Power Summit,

Jonathan Banks, Vice President of Product Development for Evaluation Services at JD Power,

revealed that average retail used prices at franchise dealers just hit over $30,000 in 2025.

Quote, low new vehicle sales are basically defining the pool of used vehicles that we're

facing today. We're still going to see that supply gap flowing through the market,

Banks explained. The result is much more expensive, used inventory mix, and the majority of buyers

are looking at monthly payments that are 30% to 40% higher than they were six years ago.

Meaning, dealers need to stock inventory that aligns with the payment bands

their local buyers can actually afford. The bright spot is certified pre-owned.

CPO vehicles deliver payments closer to regular units, used units sell faster,

and carry factory warranties that buyers trust. As Banks put it, it's one of the most underused

levers dealers have. I was able to speak at the JD Power event as an aside. Great event,

part of NADA. Maybe we'll get into that with some of our speakers today. Next up in the news,

auto lenders are opening the spigot again, and Banks are leading the charge. In 2025,

Banks became the largest auto lender for the first time in several years,

now holding nearly 28% of all auto financing. Last week at the 2026 NADA show, Experience

Head of Automotive Financial Insights Melinda Zabritsky told CDG News, quote, every bank I

talk with is in growth mode. They are buying a little deeper, a little older and stretching

terms to make deals work. What's the reason? Well, as captives pull back on subsidized rates,

once new car inventory normalized, Banks and auto finance focused companies

stepped in, scooping up more used loan volume and incremental subprime growth. And despite

elevated delinquencies, many of the worst 2022 era loans have largely worked their way through

the system. Outside those vintages, performance is holding up. Bottom line? Well, capital is

available, competition is back, and for dealers, that means more approvals, more options to structure

deals, and a noticeably friendlier financing environment heading into 2026. And actually,

one comment, again as an aside, I heard at NADA at AFSA, the captives are feeling a little overlooked.

Those OEMs that don't have subvented financing, either a 0% or some type of enticement for consumers,

the captives are feeling a little neglected in this era of less subvented rates. In other news,

a brand new report from Republican reputation. Another, in other news, a brand new report from

reputation rather, thank you, shows a clear divide opening up between average automotive retailers

and the top performers when it comes to brand management. Spoiler alert, the leaders in the

space aren't handling reviews manually anymore. Instead, they're using AI to pull together public

reviews and private customer feedback into one system so they can see how brand perception

connects to key operational issues in real time. The leading private dealer groups include Hendrick

Automotive at number one, Ken Ganley Automotive Group behind at number two, and McGovern Automotive

Group landing at number three. And as for the public's, Penske came out on top at first place,

AutoNation second, and Group 1 rounded things out in third place. Here at the Ziggler Auto Group,

huge friends and supporters of the Hendrick Group, so it's cool to see them landing at the top of

the rankings. The key here is instead of reacting after battery reviews hit, these dealers listed

are using AI to spot recurring patterns early and implement workflow adjustments fast. We've seen a

lot of that is called social listening, and the result is a continuous feedback loop that helps

leaders adapt faster and more precisely. Last up today, automakers are paying a steep price for

retooling their EV roadmaps, and Stellantis was the latest automaker to announce a massive ride-off

to the tune of 26 billion bucks, tied to its decision to pull back sharply from most electrified

vehicles. CEO Antonio Filosia said the hit reflects two things, overestimating how fast consumers

consumers would adopt EVs and poor execution along the way. Going forward, he said Stellantis'

EV strategy will move at a pace, quote, governed by demand, not command. Stellantis is also planning

to ruthlessly cut unprofitable models, selling at stake in a joint battery venture and refocusing

investment on plants and products that can actually make money at scale. But Stellantis isn't alone.

GM, Ford, and Volkswagen have all disclosed multi-billion dollar EV write downs,

as growth slows and policy support becomes, well, less predictable. Across the industry,

the total bill now tops 50 billion bucks. Looking ahead, as politics, incentives,

and consumer demand keep shifting, automakers are being forced to realign product plans with what

buyers are actually willing to pay for, and that's a wrap on today's industry headlines.

What a week! NADA is behind us. We had three very cool shows. We'll talk a little bit about

show number two, which was on Wednesday, where we were able to interview both the head of Nissan

and the head of General Motors. We also had Andy Elliott on the show. We'll be clipping up some

highlights from that. We had some tech issues, so if you're looking for that Wednesday episode,

you will have to search far and low because it's not online. But we are going to provide some clips

and an opportunity for both of those guests to pop back into the interview room here and

join us on a future episode of Daily Dealer Live. As a reminder to our entire listening

audience, please post your comments into the social media platforms where we are streaming

across all CDG social media platforms. We'd love to hear your comments today.

Bring them into the show. They changed the trajectory of what we're doing here.

Looking forward today to talking all things NADA for those who attended, talking products,

and talking strength on OEMs. And we may even get a comment or two on the Super Bowl. Was it a good

game? Not a good game. What did you think of the halftime? We'll get into all of that, plus

the most important items in all automotive. First up today, owner of Matt Bowers Automotive

Group. Welcome to the show, Matt Bowers. Matt, welcome. Thanks for being back.

Thanks for having me. Always great to be here. Hey, so the first question we always ask, Matt,

is how the heck is biz in your neck of the woods? I would say it's tougher than it has been. In my

company, we were up in, we were up last year, about 20% over 2024, which I was very pleased with.

However, I've seen in the last maybe 60, 90 days, it's been a little tougher across the board.

You're seeing what you see when it gets tougher. In my group, the best operators in my group

are at the top. And the guys that struggle with the basics, with managing inventory,

managing their behavior, managing their decision-making processes, all that,

they tend to struggle in times like now. Like nobody's walking in giving it to you.

You can't make a lot of mistakes in times like now and make a lot of money.

Today is about execution. We saw that this past week at NADA. So I'm curious, you separated the

high execution from those that aren't. Is there one or two things, Matt, that when you think about

those high executors, they're doing right in February 2026 that helps them to win versus the

rest of the industry, Matt? I think a few things. And I've noticed this. I've had my company for

10 years. We have nearly 20 stores, a fairly decent-sized group. The operators I have that

have the most success communicate the most, I would think. When they struggle, they over-communicate

actually. That's a common thing. The ones that struggle, I have to go find them.

They disappear off the face of the earth. It's more like, hey, I didn't want to bother you.

And it's like, bother me. What do you think is my money? What do you think?

Actually, I couldn't agree with you more, Matt. I see that in my own world. Those that are doing

well in executing communication is a topic in that execution. Those that aren't, they go into

hiding a little bit and they're tough to find. And that isn't the answer to poor execution, right,

Matt? Well, it's a comment. Again, the best operators in my company, and I have a couple I

consider to be extremely good to elite level operators, I speak to them the most. I communicate

with them the most. Hey, sanity check this for me, Matt. Hey, what do you think about this?

Hey, this is what happened and this is what I'm doing. Give me thoughts on that. Hey, this

isn't working. You have any idea? But the ones that struggle, crickets. I never hear from them.

And that's something I've found to be the case through the years. That's one big thing I would

say that managing inventories. Why we made money during COVID wasn't really so much margins. It

was more like supply and demand was incredibly unbalanced in our favor. So as a result, you

sold a new car, four days in stock, you paid four days of interest, the car manufacturer paid you

90 days of interest. We're all geniuses. Everything's working out for us. Well, now,

there's more supply in a lot of the OEMs than there is demand nationally or regionally where I'm at.

And the people that can understand how to manage inventories excel. Use car aging and

new car aging and stuff like that is an issue today. So before we go into use car acquisition

and discipline in that part, let's talk. Yossi brings a great question in. How's your latest

acquisition? You continue to grow as an auto group. And I do want to come back to the execution piece

and also your search for a general manager, right? Because you do have a couple posts out there

saying, hey, I'm looking for GMs. And we'd be curious to learn a little bit about what you're

looking for in that world. But tell us about your growth, your latest acquisitions, and how do

those acquisitions fit into your overall strategy, Matt? Yeah, you know, look, I had a thesis.

And I'm different than a lot of dealers, obviously. I think that's clear. But for me,

it's my own balance sheet in a bank. I don't have private equity. I don't have a bunch of LPs

from Canada sending me money. I don't have anything like that. So it's just, it's just me in a bank.

And so I have to get it right. You know, and I also have to be able to add value. I can't,

you know, some of the deals I see, you know, it's enormous money for a store that doesn't

make a lot of money. And sort of the pitch is like, well, there's only this many of this brand in the

country. To me, that's like buying a painting or something. You know, if I want to buy a painting,

I'll buy a painting. I'm here to try to make money, you know, for me and the people in the

company that work with me. So I had a theory that, you know, I would say the car manufacturers that

were the most beaten up over this last couple of years has been everybody's favorite talking

points has been Chrysler and Nissan, right? Now, there might be more to add to that list

sooner than later, by the way, but historically in the last couple of years has been Chrysler and

Nissan. And of the two, I thought, you know, Chrysler, you know, I decided that Chrysler would

be the brand. I was going to try to go into top 25, top 30 MSAs in the country by image

compliance stores that had full service capacity availability. So if I got it right, let's say,

I don't have to go put on a hard hat and go build bait like it's already there.

It's there. And, you know, and see if I can get good value on what I'm buying and then maybe

start there and build around with other brands, which is really the opposite of how a lot of people

do it. You know, let's go buy Toyota and go from there. Whoa. I said, let me try this and go the

other way. And so I bought a store in Dallas, Texas, you know, it's called North Dallas Chrysler

Dodge Jeep. I'm also not going to name them my name either. That's a new thing. So I'm not going

to name them at Bowers, whatever. Another one in Indianapolis, suburban Indianapolis,

which is called Indy Chrysler Dodge Jeep, which is a really good name. Glad they let me do that.

And those have been really recently in the last six weeks. Okay. So those are going fine so far.

The people I bought them for were nice people. Asbury Automotive was one of the big publicly

traded company. And the other people are really high line dealers from Austin, Texas, good people.

So with the Stellantis acquisition, two big ones, Indianapolis and then Dallas.

In Dallas, you share a marketplace with Carvana. And Carvana has been in auto news recently. Tell

us a little bit about your take on Carvana's continuing acquisition of Stellantis points and

how are you needing to be in the world versus Carvana? How does it change the marketplace

for you as a Stellantis dealer? I got to give it to Carvana. If they're anything,

they're not stupid people, clearly. They became billionaires out of executing on this idea. That

very timely idea on their side. They made it lost it and made it back. Of course,

which is every great story. I think that after being there, what I thought was going to happen

isn't exactly how it's happening. I assumed they were going to do the same sort of business

that car dealers do. We're going to go sell people in our local community. We're going

to bring them back to service. They don't do anything like that. Basically, what they do

is what they do with used cars. They take their four or six Chrysler franchises, whatever they

have currently. They aggregate all their inventory generally on a big website. And then they advertise

the cars at $5,000 or $6,000 net losers and ship them all over the country. I have yet to have the

first customer online or otherwise say, hey, you have a white one. They have a white one.

They're sending them all over the country. They're sending them mainly out of the market.

I think that would work. You have to hit the volume bonus every single month. You have to

not pay people a whole lot clearly to work there. You have to sell cars back of

advertising credits, floor playing credits. You're using all those. To me, you would be

sort of a test as if the OEMs did this. That's probably how they do, I guess.

DTM, direct to market by OEMs. I have had several people come to me and say, hey,

I bought this. I need help. I can't. So I've done some stuff relative to taking care of people after

the sale or in service like that, which maybe I'm sure they're working on. But that's been their

approach that I've noticed in the market with them. So is Stellanus allowing Carvan to buy

multiple points all across the country? Is it healthy for the overall Stellanus dealer network?

Is it a good move? Is it a bad move? I don't know that they told them, hey,

this is what we're going to do. We're going to go buy a bunch of cars, list 10,000 cars online

and sell them like this. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to get to that. No, it doesn't.

It doesn't take literally anything. Jeep Wranglers, German Shepherd puppies. Yeah, yeah.

You can sell it, throw the paper. You can do this, buy a whole shitload of it and then sell it below

everybody else and then not pay anybody. A guy moves a car on a transport truck and they drive it,

and that's it. I don't know. It's not the business I'm in, so I don't think it really affects me that

much. So I think that it's interesting. I actually put a post on LinkedIn recently about the Advertising

Covenant Chrysler at NADA, which I didn't attend, which is the first one I haven't attended in a

long time for various reasons. They are going to come out with an advertising covenant,

which I think will blow a hole in the side of this plan that's happening currently, if that happens.

And what is that covenant? What will that say? I don't know this once they come it up.

It's like other advertising covenants. It declares a minimum acceptable price that you can sell the

product at and advertise it online. You can sell whatever you want, but you can't advertise it

for any less than X, which is the same across your entire dealer body.

For a struggling brand, for Stellanus, is that a good overall strategy to have

a powerful entity like Carvana just put jet mode to the race to the bottom? The race to the bottom

is fast in that process. I think the number one Chrysler dealer in the country is actually in

Louisiana. So I'm actually the number two Chrysler dealer in Louisiana. I sell more retail to people

in Louisiana. Number one sells them much like I'm describing. They ship them all over the country,

like you would wholesale parts, drop shipping them and stuff like that.

Look, it's just not a business that I'm in or want to be in. And what we do is that we try to

sell people in our local market as many of them as we can, bring them into our service department,

and then bring them back over and over and over again. And that's how you kind of build a business.

Otherwise, we're doing some other business. We're doing, we're the distribution business,

basically, then, which is different than what I know. So it hasn't impacted me day to day a great

deal like you would think. But however, it's a serious thing. I mean, if, you know, if, you know,

what message would you give to Stellanus executives listening to the show today about that strategy

and allowing or not allowing Carvana to continue to acquire points with that strategy, that race to

the bottom? Well, I think there was a lot of unknown in the beginning. And I don't, you know,

again, I believe this is America, you know, if Carvana wants to figure out a better way to do it

than I or you or whoever, that's their right to do that. And I support that. But I think nobody

really knew what was going to happen. What was the plan? Yeah. Okay. Now we do. Okay. It's basically

a distribution setup where we're going to, you know, advertise the cars, $5,000, $6,000 back

in net invoice and drop ship on the people. If that's how we want to do it. Well, all hour. Yeah.

I don't know. Like it's a fleet sort of feel to it. The comment section is alive and

I'm going to stay mad. So yoga cars who we saw an ADA props to yoga cars. Thanks for being here

says Carvana will work around map easily with simple unlock button. Once it's one to one,

it's not mass advertising or if they use simple AI chat to reveal the pricing, they can probably

gamify their way through that. You have to okay, everybody can do that. I will just say this,

yoga cars that, you know, it's just not that simple. Okay, right? Like unlock a better price.

Like, is that what we want to say? Here's the best price, but unlock a better price. Okay. Like,

the real world, people don't get that. Like not everybody is me or you or yoga cars. Okay. Like

nobody knows what that means. Like, yeah, they just assume the price they see is the best price.

They don't know that there's a little secret password that you can get. Yeah. Like it's,

it's the, the, the, the additional step dilutes it, right? The, the initial and it'll probably

hamper them if there are covenants that say, oh yeah, first price. Yeah. I mean, that, that's not

what they do in their normal business. They, you know, so look, I think some of the advertising

covenants are, you know, like, look, I have a store, I'll tell you a quick story. I have a store

in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a Nissan store. It's a really good, it's a very good store. It leads the

state in sales. It's one of the biggest, if not the biggest service location they have in the

country. Very, very profitable stores. It's really, really well. Once in a while,

the dealers in Nashville, Tennessee will effectively use up a strike to say, like, you know what,

we're going to violate the covenant. We get three strikes. We're going to use one up.

When that store did that this year, they literally sold double the annual average double. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know, is the ad covenant working is what I'm saying? Is if you can take it off

and you sell twice as many cars to consumers, what's the point? Yeah. So you're saying some

dealers in 2026 strategize striking the ad covenant in order to get a little bit of a pop

and they measure it, right? Yeah. Everybody does. Okay. And so this store did, you know, so we used

a strike and sold 280 cars. Okay. Were you averaging 145 new or whatever it is? But I guess the way I

think about it is this, and I took some heat. You know, there's a gentleman who got really upset

with me on LinkedIn and told me that, you know, like, it's sad. He called me sad. Okay. That

my only idea was to aggregate the brand. And it's like, look, I think the dealers should do

whatever they want. And the consumer is the one that votes on that. Okay. If I want to do bad

business, people are going to figure me out and I ain't going to be in business very long. Okay.

Right. But I should have the creative ability to go do whatever. So it's a touchy subject with

these ad covenants. It's my only response to that, Matt, would be a large entity like a Carvana

and National Powerhouse does have ability through a network to put people out of business and 100

It's interesting. You know, a big, big debate in the marketplace today is, you know, do we allow

Chinese EVs to come into the US market, right? And it would affect, effectively, potentially

shut down a segment of, or a class of vehicles, right? A Walmart did that when it first came

into business. It shut mom and pops out. So I do think there does need to be thinking by OEMs

about, is this what they want, right? Because, you know, on scale, large national chains have

the power to impact business nationally. Fair or what would your response be?

I think that's 100% fair. And I think that Stalances, and look, I have plenty of friends

that work there and these are really good people, really good, talented people. I think there's a,

you know, we don't know. Let's give it a shot and see what happens here. Okay, so now we know.

You know, is this okay? And if it is okay, if it's not okay, then let's do something different.

But basically, that's the strategy. The strategy was a lot more simpler than I should have figured

it, but it's very simple. Stalances sending a message by accepting it and allowing it and moving

forward. Well, you know, it hadn't been that long is what I would say. There's time.

Carvana had one store in Phoenix. I don't think they did this like this. Okay. Like that store is

selling 50, 60 cars. The other ones, since they've gone to this method right here, they've sold a lot

of cars. Okay, they've consistently been the top five nationally. But I think, I think if anybody

wants to spend a ton of money on the internet and list the cars that's 6,000 and 7,000 back of

invoice, you deliver them to people's driveway, I think you can also sell a lot of cars. Now,

can you stay in business like that? I don't know. Well, my question, my question to that, Matt,

would be, was that accidental that it wasn't 0.1 where it began or was it intentional and part

of the evolving plan that it happened with? I have an idea on that. All right. So we've

talked to Lannis. That led headlines at NADA, particularly their dealer meeting, though neither

one of us was there. So we won't necessarily pull some takeaways. But I do know, Lannis' newest

ad campaign, Jerusalem Iyer at the meeting. I don't know if you had any feedback on that or if

you heard anything from that. But let's transition over to Nissan because you're a very well known,

very regarded Nissan dealer. We had Tiago on the show last Wednesday. He talked a lot about his

excitement, the change in the leadership team, the direction of the brand and his hopes for the

future. He was very adamant that Nissan is a rising brand, having kind of shed off the

challenges that they've had. What's your take, Matt, as a dealer? What's Nissan getting right

February 2026 and where are they struggling as they seek to turn this around?

You know, I have more caution in that regard. Same thing. I have a lot of friends at Nissan

that are in their executive and leadership team, nationally as well as regionally in the regions

that I'm in. People have known me a long, long time. They're really good professionals, great

people. I think there's a plan that is a good plan in place right now, but that's never really

been the issue with Nissan. It's been more like there's a good plan. Do the people in North America

have the ability or are they empowered to carry the plan out? Because Nissan is a company that's

really run from Japan. There's historically been some sort of a disconnect between the

Japanese leadership and the leadership in North America. That really began at the end of Carlos

Cohen's tenure and Jose Munoz's tenure. Chrysler, for all their ticks and fleas, their CEO goes to

their board, makes recommendations and they back him. Now, sometimes it ends up like Mr. Tavares,

where he messed everything up and now they're fixing it, but they're backing what they want to do.

I think Nissan has been a little bit different in that regard. So I think if the people in North

America are empowered to make decisions, I think that you can have a successful go. But I'm not

sure if that's going to happen. It hasn't happened in the last five years. I'll tell you that.

So Matt, it's interesting in the CDG circles that I'm in as there's conversations about Nissan.

That is a common theme. Is the US leadership empowered to make decisions? What would you need

to see from local Nissan dealership in the US that would be a sign that, hey, they have full

command authority. They're able to make the tough decisions to execute on that brand in the US

marketplace and make the decisions that the US market requires to be successful. What would you

need to see? Action. I think you need to see action. Okay. Where Nissan is a brand that

over the last recent couple of years, there has been a lot of talk, but when you really get down

to it, not a lot of substantive actions. Okay. They also have to figure out what their identity is

as a business. Like them or hate them, going in Mr. Munoz, you knew what you were getting.

They're going to wholesale cars. They're going to give you an objective and they're going to pay

you a bunch of money to hit the objective. Okay. It lets you do it however you wish to do this.

It's a brand that DNA was built around. Sporty, you think Nissan, you think the Z,

you think the Maxima, that's what you think. And now it's a brand that has an ad covenant.

They still wholesale the cars, so they haven't changed their method of producing cars. Like

there is far more wholesale availability of new Nissan's and there is demand to buy them.

Okay. Currently. And when there's that sort of imbalance, it creates profitability problems

at the dealer level. It creates, you know, dealers don't want to buy, like these are hard to run and

make money with. They're hard. Dealers don't want that. Dealers, the most desirable brands, if you

look at it, are the ones that have the most equilibrium between the wholesale supply and the

demand by the consumer. Honda, Toyota, Subaru, all these brands come on and that's one thing

they all share in common. So let's talk about that pivoting from Nissan. We had the head of

General Motors on the show last Wednesday. Many dealers across the GM network are saying, hey,

we need more vehicles, which is an interesting sentiment from General Motors who historically

built more vehicles than the market could handle. And they were very forward about, hey, we're

controlling supply to help dealers be more profitable. And he quoted, if memory serves,

I think he said dealers were 5% more profitable in 25 than they were prior years. It's not what we,

as dealers, want to hear. We want more supply to meet the demand. But any thoughts on GM's approach,

it's quiet, but it's been effective, it seems, even though we want more units.

Two thoughts. Okay. So General Motors has done an excellent job. Okay. It is very difficult to go

by a good General Motors store out there in the world. I have tried. Okay. I'm always looking for

that. And whenever I find that, it's just not me in the room trying to buy it. It's a crowded room.

Oh, yes. Okay. So they have done a great job. My stores, my General Motors stores make money

every month. They're the most consistent stores I have. And that's largely due to that

factor that you mentioned. There's a very balanced supply and demand approach

from their wholesale attitude. Now, it's difficult to take a store that's underperforming greatly

and then increase that store. If you're going to go buy a 50% sales effective store,

it's almost like, I call General Motors the Honda of the domestics. It reminds me a lot of Honda

when I work with Honda. It reminds me, you're not going to, you know, Nissan Hyundai,

you can get sales effective in 90 days if you got the right dude. Okay. Like you can make this

happen. Not with those guys. It's going to take a little bit longer than that. The second thing I

have to say is that, look, you know, there's a lot of car dealers that don't know what they're

talking about. Okay. I'm just going to be honest with you. I love everybody and I'm not right

about everything. I'm wrong about lots of stuff. Okay. Yeah. However, you know, we need more cars.

You know, what's the lesser of the two evils to have? Well, that's what I'm asking you. Yeah,

that's what I'm asking you. COVID already taught us this lesson. Yeah. Everybody agreed during

COVID will never go back to oversupply. And it's incredible how quickly so many OEMs went back

to oversupply. Immediately. Props to GM, they were in an oversupply situation prior to COVID.

And they've been very quietly executing on that discipline. Added to that, I think our Toyota,

to your point, Honda. Honda is probably a little bit on the chip piece, but still there. Subaru,

although the supply is increasing. I don't think dealers can have it both ways, Matt. And to your

point, which is the better, right? No. Complaining for more inventory or trying to get rid of the

stuff that's declining. I mean, look, I think it's shown us that when there's a good supply

in demand balance, you have profitability increases. That's not debatable. I don't think

that's debatable to anybody. You know, during COVID, if there were eight people in Metro New

Orleans that wanted to buy a white Hyundai Palisade and there existed six or nine in the market,

you could sell it, make people happy, make them a good deal and make a little bit of money

in all that and then not keep it on your floor plan for six months. Well, today, there might be

six or seven people that want to buy them. And there's 92 of them out there. And so it oversupply

erodes profit. And so COVID taught us this. So look, I think obviously, like, look,

General Motors has done two things without any debate. Their dealers make more money than they

used to and their stores are worth more money than they ever have been. Yeah. Yeah. What am I

going to say? I wish I had six more Silverados. I mean, look, I'll take that in my opinion. It's

a good math. Matt Bowers, I wish we could continue with you. We've got about 10 minutes over. The

producers are jumping up and down. We need you back because I'd love to hear more about your

strategy as it comes to hiring general managers. We've had many people on the show that say,

hey, what's the toughest job to hire for in today's day? It's not the service technicians

anymore. We can pay for them. It is good leadership boots on the ground. I know you've got some posts

out there. So we'd love to have you back to talk about that. And then also answer the question of

all these brands you have. And you've got many, who are you bullish of in 2026? But will you come

back in the next few months? We'd love to have you back to discuss that more. Yeah. I went through

a little bit of a relocation for my family. And then we've had some weather up where I live at.

And I'd love to come back sooner than later. All right. See to text me. Okay. We'll do it.

Matt Bowers, owner Matt Bowers, automotive group. Thanks for being on the show today.

Thank you for your perspectives. Thank you.

By the way, we could have like another 20 minutes with Matt. Fasting perspectives. He's

absolutely unvarnished. He's very transparent in how he shares his opinions and perspectives. And

you know, I think he's got a great take on Carvon and what Carvon is doing. Most dealers in today's

marketplace shrug their shoulders, say, hey, I'm not really in that space. It's not going to impact

me. And I don't think it's going to impact anybody until from a size perspective, they're large

enough for it to impact. But at that point, if it continues, it will be a continuation of that

race to the bottom. All right. Let's talk Four Eyes. Today's episode is brought to you by Four Eyes.

Four Eyes helps dealers turn on data into action, starting with a clean connected data foundation

across dealership systems. Four Eyes empowers dealerships to use that data to drive consistent

execution throughout their business. The data stays dealer-owned, vendor-neutral,

and works with any tools or partners more than a CDP Four Eyes is a reset for how dealers get data,

gets put to work, headquartered in Oregon, and they were also at NADA, visited their booth

during the time there. Four Eyes employees live in 20 plus states to be closer to the communities

where dealers are. Visit www.FourEyes.io forward slash to learn more. We appreciate

Four Eyes for supporting today's content, including that fascinating conversation just

now with Matt Bowers. You can click the QR code if you're on the show. After the fact,

you can go to the notes and go from there. So thanks to Four Eyes. Mohamed Yusuf said,

insightful and highly relevant points. Your perspective reflects real-world dealership

leadership, especially in aligning customer experience with measurable performance. That

comment targeted towards Matt Bowers. So thank you, Matt, again for being on. Let's transition

quickly. Miguel, Yellow Sand Martin, principal of YSM Design. Welcome to the show.

Miguel, welcome to the show. Appreciate having you on. So one of the first questions we ask

everybody, Miguel, is how's Biz tells who you are and what you do out there in the world, Miguel?

We are an architectural firm. We have been designing car dealerships for over three decades,

and we continue to do so. We represented the OEMs for some time, and now we are on the car,

on the dealership side. And business has been kind of soft and certain because of the economic

environment that we're in, the facts and forth of things that are happening in the market.

But it's beginning to get better now at NADA. I saw a lot of optimism. Let's put that way.

Fantastic. Yeah. In fact, there were a ton of people at NADA, more than have been there in

the past several years. And I think there was a lot of curiosity around, what are the latest

innovations and evolutions in automotive that can allow dealers to stay compliant? So you talk

about speaking compliant and successful and profitable. You build facilities. You talk about

image compliance. What are three non-negotiables that OEMs care about most when building facilities?

What do dealers overthink in 2026? It's mostly, this is a co-branding exercise because you have

the OEMs and you have the local dealers or the national accounts that you have. But it's mostly

anything that has to do with their image. You know, in some times it was a portal. Sometimes it was

several elements inside the building that make it look, that brand, you know, that identifies

the building with the brand. So it depends on the brand. There are certain things that, you know,

mostly is anything that has to do with the image from the outside. We started in 1994 with Ford

Motor Company and it was building a brand, branding a building. So the buildings are branded. The

buildings need to reflect the image of the dealer and also the OEM. But the OEM is, you know, they

have elements that come and go, but they're still there. You know, they change over time.

Yeah. Where do you think most dealers typically lose the most money in building a product?

They overthink it and they don't spend enough time in the pre-design effort when the

relationships inside the dealership are critical. Back in the days, I'm dating myself back in the

mid-90s, we used to spend a week inside the dealership talking to all the different players

in the dealership and learning about the relationships and who they were talking to,

interacting with. And things have changed because now we have the big national companies,

you know, the public companies that are playing in the game. But back in the days,

it was very important and learning how they interact with each other and how efficient they

become playing as a team. We're seeing video of some of your facilities and projects and they

are breathtaking. Every one of these facilities is just striking. There's a big emphasis in

2026 and beyond on light, natural light bringing open spaces and light inside of facilities.

That's a key element I see, common element in the designs you're creating.

It is a key element. In natural light, we are human beings. We like natural light. So when you

make an environment bright, it's inviting. It's nicer. You know, people expect that these days,

you know, back the old days when it was a dark hole where they were selling cars are gone.

One big concern in automotive today is direct to consumer sales. We've talked a lot about

Volkswagen through Scout coming into the US and getting approval in multiple states to go direct

to consumer. You know, we have the brands that never sold vehicles any other way like Tesla

and Rivian and some of the others. One of the biggest arguments is the franchise model,

well, and argument provides for better facilities, right? OEMs require dealers spend

significant sums of money to build beautiful facilities. You go to these direct to consumer

outlets like Tesla and the facilities are not that great. They're very spare. They're very

spartan. There's not a ton of expense. Talk to us about what, how do you see that? Like is the

money that dealers spend in these beautiful facilities well returned in sales and why do

these direct to consumers focus? You know, why are the facilities more spartan on those?

Well, for one thing, they sell cars that they don't care about the customer journey or anything

like that. It's mostly an online experience and their facilities are a soft part in my humble

opinion. We've worked with them over the years and, you know, having a nicer facility where the

expectations are much higher from the consumers back in the days when Lexus was the one that

started it all, when they started adding, you know, coffee bars and things like that inside

the dealership. Now a customer expects to have that in almost every brand. So I think having

a nicer facility is conducive to better business overall. Yeah. So I've been watching multiple

projects, both ground up builds, renovations, whatnot. One common theme I see in 25 and going

into 26 is over budget, right? It's tough to target bit budget. How do you keep a project

running on time and on budget from your perspective? It's again, doing your homework properly,

spending time in the very beginning and, you know, making sure that we hit all the targets,

but we stay within budget. We work a lot with construction companies from the beginning

and together with them. We're not enemies in this project and we work for one client and

one client only. So we spend a lot of time with them and making sure that they're happy as well

as the brand. You know, the OEM has to be satisfied with whatever it is that we're doing.

So the time spent in the beginning is critical in my personal opinion. I think it's, you know,

we need to spend a lot more time in the beginning. That's I think where the large companies, the

national companies are not as strong because they don't have a general manager that will stay in the

office forever. You know, we've had projects where the manager has changed three or four times during

the project. So spending the time in the beginning is critical. Paul Salisman online comments,

I'm curious Miguel's thought on the trend to open floor plans with fewer offices

and how those designs have worked in practicality for dealers in in 25 and 2026.

The open that has been always a debate, I think you need to offer a variety of options to the

customer. There are customers that will feel comfortable in an open environment and customers

that will not be the same. So you need to have options. You know, having the open floor is

more inviting is less threatening if you want. If you get somebody locked up in an office,

they feel that they cannot escape from jail as opposed to having it in the open floor. So it

has a lot to do with what kind of consumers you're targeting and how they feel inside your store.

What it's interesting, you know, in our increasingly digital age, thinking of AI,

thinking of digital retailing, more online purchases and acquisitions,

how is the shape of a dealership in 2026 changing to accommodate that online buyer and that digital

retail buyer? Is the shape of the facility changing quite a bit? Things are changing.

I guess you have the younger generations that don't expect as much as the older generations,

people of my age, but because some people, all they want to do is come and get the car and

leave. Another one, the experience, they know they need to have to come back for service,

so they want to go all together. So I think with age, things are changing slowly.

So EV capabilities really shaped facilities for the past several years as manufacturers made

requirements on not only having chargers, but also capabilities of performing service inside

facilities. Now there's a little bit of EV uncertainty or hesitancy. How are you adapting

for that on the architecture and the build side? And what advice would you give to dealers? Do you

accommodate EVs? Do you go all in? Do you build for future capacity depending on which way things

go? What's your advice? Well, I think EVs are here to stay. I don't think they're going to go

anywhere. They may have slowed down right now because of lack of incentives from the government,

but that's not going to change. Once they get to certain benchmarks and when they get batteries that

will go at the 500 mile range and whatnot, they will become mainstream. I think they have been

growing steadily, not maybe at the speed that everybody wants, but I think dealers need to

accommodate for that. That is the future. Now that is going to change the business model for them

and for us, including because those cars don't need that much service like the ICE cars do.

All right, so from a building perspective, last question up today. If a dealer watching the show

comes back from NADA and has a couple million bucks to invest today, what would you put it in,

of facilities leaning in on digital experience? Would you increase size of fixed ops and why?

Where would you put a couple million bucks if you're a dealer in 20 times?

I would do, well, if you want ROI, if you want immediate ROI, needs to go into a service area.

I don't think there's any doubts about that, but looking long term, I think you need to go into a

digital experience as well, because that's the trend that we're heading towards.

Miguel Yellow, San Martin, principal of YSM Design. Thank you so much for being on the show

today and sharing your perspectives on all things facility, including that tension between OEM and

dealer and how to strike that right balance on building a facility. Miguel, thanks for being

on the show. Thanks, Sam. Thank you for having me. Fun conversation. It's interesting. Have you

ever seen come in under budget and on time? Having someone great in his position is so important in

2026. I do think it's interesting that whole tension between direct to consumer.

All right, let's jump straight into our third and final guest for the day, Shane Wood, General

Mandra, Bruce Titus Automotive. Shane, welcome to the show. Thanks, Sam. Glad to be here.

You leave no doubt about the team you were supporting last night. Seahawks, right? Go,

Seahawks. None, none at all. Yeah, we're really happy about that. Did the game

disappoint or what was your take on Super Bowl 60 this year? No, I thought it was a phenomenal

game. We showed up. Would have loved to see a couple more offensive touchdowns, but no,

that was a great game. Had a lot of fun on that. Yeah. All right. Now, I'm going to go there.

This is non-automotive related, but we're all into branding. We all appreciate

something that works well. What's your take on the halftime show that was much talked about?

Bad Bunny. Did Bad Bunny deliver or was the alternate halftime show that was available?

I have no idea where it was, but I don't know. I thought it was well produced. It had a lot

of pretty girls in it. I always liked that. Someone told me, even if you can't understand it,

you can still let the rhythm of music move you. I don't know. Not my thing, but I can see why

some people were entertained by it. What's your favorite halftime show of a Super Bowl

thinking? I think Prince was badass. I really loved Janet. It was good. Yeah. I had a good one.

There's been a lot of really good ones. I saw Green Day at the beginning. I think Green Day

would have been a great halftime. I don't know if they've ever done it. What about Snoop Dogg?

I actually liked that one, too, back out last. It brought in all the classic 90s for those of

that age. I'm a West Coast guy, so I love Snoop Dogg. Well, hey, you went to NADA this past year,

this past week. What's your takeaway from NADA? Yeah, this was a really busy NADA. Some people

were speculating that it was going to be slow just because of the days, but it was packed.

I saw a lot of really cool stuff. Definitely an AI flex on almost every product,

which is natural. Some was real. Some was just an ingredient they'd love to sell.

No, I thought it was really good. We signed a couple of partners up, so I'm excited about

making some moves. What did you see that worked? What did you sign? What did you make a move on?

We moved to Call Review. I think they had a great product. We have a call

recording vendor, but this seemed like a better option for us. I signed up a cool

company called Icon that will put a GPS on our keys and one on the car. It will allow us to

sell that product to customers who are free to install everything. I'm going to sign up Mike

Karma as a scheduler. My whole thing is consolidating. I've got a lot of different

products that do a lot of different things. I'm loving seeing these businesses come in and

do a bit of everything. Mike Karma can replace my true video for video MPIs, can replace my text

to drive for communicating with customers, can replace AutoPoint for what that does. That's

going to be a good product for us as well. Is that the measure of success coming into 2026?

Yossi, Cardioship Guy himself has predicted that the tech stack is going to decrease in

number of vendors. To your point, we're going to be asking fewer people to do more. You saw that

with companies like Mike Karma. Do you think that's an increasing trend?

It needs to be. If you're a dealer, for instance, right now, I have Drive, I have Impel doing

service, I have FullPath on my chat. I have AI in all these weird places. That was another

product we added, was a CDP through FullPath. I was looking at Orbi, went with FullPath as a

CDP, and I'm going to do some marketing with them. I think you need to consolidate your data.

I think we need to speak from one place and definitely prioritize the customer base that

we have. In a world we're living in right now where things are a little tight. I think we need

to love the one we're with and understand that we got a huge book of business that we can be

creating new business from. Was there a moment at NADA where you learned something? You went in

seeking to solve problems. Was there an aha moment where you said, hey, I hadn't anticipated that,

or I didn't expect that, or I didn't think that was possible? No, not really. I wouldn't say that.

Let me think here. We saw a lot of really cool products. It's just like, honestly, you still

got to take a second to unpack everything because we demoed nonstop. No, I wouldn't say there was

anything that really surprised me, but I stayed pretty current with everything that's coming out

as it comes out. You talk about across your group that you're trying to create a culture of buying

across your entire store. What does that culture of buying look like day to day?

Yeah. It looks like this. It looks like, okay, I have an acquisition manager

communicating with customers that are coming in from service. That's one position, but the culture

is when my advisor presents the menu asking them what they want to do, they're also presenting

the option of, don't forget, we are interested in your car that is a high value car, which is

a challenge to get advisors into. We have a strategy that they don't lose the deal if we buy

the customer's car or they still get to keep the reconditioning work. In fact, it'll probably be a

bigger ticket for them because when it's an internal, everything's just a blank check for

those guys. It sounds like when a customer calls in, we ask if they're calling to buy or sell a car.

It is a third-party acquisition manager upstairs. Really, it's about every single employee.

I give a huge dollar amount for referrals to buy a car. It's 500 bucks.

Yeah, that's significant. How long have you had this in place, these steps?

This has been a good six months.

And what is the impact post versus pre? Because that's a pretty significant,

you've changed all the incentives to get everybody pointed towards acquisition, buying used cars,

which that's the atomic nuclear race in 2026 is how do you get that great used car,

not waiting around for it to buy it at auction?

Yeah. Well, at first, it feels expensive because we have a saying. I stole it from Danny Z.

I'm in a VAO 220 group with him and David Long, and he has a saying that he just says BFC,

and that's buy the effing car. If you're going to have a strategy of buying cars,

then you need to act like it. You can't start trying to UA or get cute. You need to buy the car

because that one car could be two deals. Those two deals could be

more and it becomes extremely valuable. You talk about the lifetime value of a customer.

We really think that each car represents a customer and referrals and be back. So we need

to buy the effing car every time. How did you pivot on the culture from that? Because to your point,

so many used car managers and teams and automotive leading up to this year felt like, hey, you know

what? If you could buy it right, if you could devalue it right, you could score that home run

rather than seeing the long view. You went from short-term gain to long view. How did you change

that culturally within your stores six months ago? Yeah. Well, it's like Matt was saying with his

GMs, the successful ones that communicate a lot. I read a book by Patrick Lancioni and it's called

The Motive where he talks about being the CRO, the chief repeating officer. That's what it's

about. We just talk about the vision, what we're trying to do here all the time. When we see people

do it right, we applaud it. When we see people doing it wrong, we talk about that too.

What are the metrics from six months ago to today in terms of acquisition? You mentioned, hey, it

feels expensive, but are you acquiring more vehicles? Has that resulted in higher sales on the

front end? What is the impact of this process? It is. It's still early. I just hired my third

party acquisition manager. I brought on BAN, Vehicle Acquisition Network. They've got a really

cool platform, but we've been tracking trade acquisition for about a year now. We were as

low as in the 30s and that's tough. That's tough when you're selling a car and you only

take three. We've pushed that up to 60. We look for trade-ins. We're feeling pretty good about

that number. I incentivize salespeople on top of their commission if there's a trade-in involved.

The 500 bucks that you're paying to LLT members, has that increased your recon cost or your cost

acquisition? Has that yielded a lower price point on acquisitions? What's been the effect on that?

Both. We have yielded a lower price point, but I build a car for the referral fee. My cost

has gone up, but we're not buying these to wholesale them. We're buying them to sell them. I have a

back-end finance team at the dealership. I have good sales managers when we do take a trade-in.

We do a pretty solid job at doing an active delivery. If there's reconditioning that needs done,

we're able to point that out and justify a lower price. Sometimes you've got to pay a

little bit more for the right car, but that's the car business.

Yeah. When you think about this acquisition, what's your best source right now as your teams

go out and just try to buy anywhere? Buy the freaking cars, you said. Is it service lane?

Is it private parties? Is it on digital channels? Is it trade-ins? Where's the best source today?

It's Facebook. Facebook is the single best source is Facebook Marketplace.

There's a lot of cars there. I know a lot of dealers put effort into that.

Usually it's a salesperson calling and they take a swing and they go through the motions

of appraising, but it takes time to buy cars off of Facebook Marketplace because most people

are trying to get a lot of money when they sell privately like that.

My question would be is what do most dealers miss about acquiring vehicles on Facebook

Marketplace February of 2026? Why do most people not see the opportunity you do?

They're impatient. They take a swing. They see the car and the customer is

over here and the dealer is over here and they take the swing and they don't make the deal and

they move on. It's no different than selling a car. It takes long-term follow-up. You could be

communicating with the customer and not every communication is another offer. A lot of it could

be a why buy. It could be, hey, don't forget, I'm still here. I know you're still looking.

I understand why you're asking more than the market can bear. I would be too if I were in your

shoes, but if you get to the point where you want the check, I've got that. Just staying in the game

long enough, it sounds simple, but that's a real key when you're looking private party because

everyone shoots for the moon at first, but if you're still there with a check and they got a payoff

and you can be that dealer for them, then you win. Six months ago, you started this

aggressive acquisition strategy. You've doubled your trade percent from 30 to 60. You hired a

third-party acquisition manager. As you sit down with that manager, what's the goal for the future

and what prompted you to hire this third-party acquisition manager and what's the goal for

the future, the vision of what this will be six months down the road? I'd love to see this build

into a team of buyers. I think that the more cars we can acquire, use cars is scalable endlessly,

in my opinion. All the cars that are bought on the marketplace are generally found online.

If you can find a place to put them, you can find a customer to sell them.

I have another piece of our dealership that's across the street. We're remodeling it. We're

little pride in that building over there, but I think that would be a pretty nice little

buying center. Right now, I have them up with the BDC. David Long is a good friend of mine.

He's been on the show before. He has. He's got a great strategy. He's been a great mentor for me.

He's right. I'm just riding with him. Last couple of questions. We go back to NADA.

You've got Nissan. You've got Stellanus. You've got Subaru. You've got Ford.

Did you go to all those make meetings this past week?

No, I didn't do any meeting. Oh, none at all. Why?

That's what I go on with you guys because we were demoing and I'm pretty familiar. They had a U300

meeting with Ford. I stay pretty on top of what's going on with Ford without going to the meeting,

so there's never really much for surprises there. I would have loved to hear about a

reveal, a product reveal of some sort, but usually do those at NADA.

Of all the OEMs you represent, who do you feel is winning in 2026 and best positions and why?

Well, I mean, it's like Matt was talking about with you. They have that good equilibrium between

what a customer wants and how many they build. Right now, while you guys were talking, I was

curious what Ford's day supply is up to now. We're just over 105 days. That's not a healthy place.

What's interesting is we had the Navella's factory deal and you think we'd be really short enough,

150, we will be, but right now we're heavy still. We've just seen two of the lightest

wholesale we've seen in a very long time. What may seem like a lot right now in a couple of months

is going to feel very thin. The best discipline on inventory control you're saying is Subaru

of your portfolio? I would say so, for sure. We've got Neatsman. We've got Stalant. We've got the whole.

We've got some good ones. We've got some tough ones. Who do you think in the turnaround world is

doing the best work right now to do the right things, to increase your multiplier, should you

decide to sell? I think Stalantis is doing some good things. I really do. I think that

you can sell cars and you can make money in those dealerships. You can lose a lot of money, too,

if you're not paying attention and not managing it properly. I was listening to what Matt was

saying about he's going the other route and building from the ground up. I think that's a

good strategy. You can make some money right there. You're going to pay through the moon if you want

to go buy a Toyota store or something like that. Yes. He's got an interesting strategy.

A couple of comments from online as we wrap here. A couple of last questions. YogaCar says,

two questions here. Do you pay top dollar on Facebook, speaking of your used car acquisitions?

Yes. It's hit and miss. We're going to constantly be chipping away at what a customer

wants for that car. CarMax offers top dollar for a car. They buy a lot of cars, but they also

average $1,800 in discount once the customer comes for an active appraisal. We're going to

come to an alignment with the customer to get an appointment set. Once we have that appointment,

we're going to start looking at the real world reconditioning of this car and we're going to

justify what we think this car is going to really be able to sell for. The last question

from YogaCar is, how many cars are you sourcing from the service drive on a monthly basis?

Not nearly enough. Service. I'm a big fan of Bob Ruth Ford. They buy a lot of cars

off the street. They're just insane with what they can do from a third party, but like us,

they don't buy a lot from service. I've told myself that maybe Ford isn't the best brand for

buying out of service. I don't know if that's true or not or if that's a bad paradigm, but

we're going to keep battling and we're going to keep presenting appraisals to every customer.

Well, the most recalled OEM of 2025, Ford, you would think does present a great opportunity.

So any of our listeners out there, if you have a perspective on that, we'd love to hear

your perspective on trades in the service drive for Ford OEMs and what the potential is there.

Shane Wood, General Manager, Bruce Titus, Automotive Group, congrats on your Seahawk win

last night. Thanks for sharing your perspective on all things automotive, including NADA and sourcing

used cars. There you go. You got the horn. Thanks for being on the show today. Thank you, Sam.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Save you. Great show today. First show,

post NADA. Thank you to our Daily Deal Live audience for watching today, where we break down

the biggest moves in the car business as they happen. Don't forget we're here live every Monday,

Wednesday, Friday, 1pm Eastern. So if this is your world, hit like, hit subscribe,

turn on those notifications so you never ever miss a beat.

And we'll see you next episode. See you Wednesday, everybody. Thanks for being here.

Bowers on Challenging Carvana, San Martin on Dealership Design, Wood on Stocking | Daily Dealer Live

About this episode

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Car Dealership Guy Podcast