Kia is a car company from South Korea that makes cars that many people find affordable and dependable. They also offer good warranties to help keep your car covered.
Add-ons are extra things the car seller tries to get you to buy with your car, like special covers or extra protection. They can make the car cost more than you expected.
Sometimes car companies offer special deals or discounts to make buying a new car cheaper or easier. These deals help people decide to buy cars when prices might otherwise be too high.
Ford F-Series pickup trucks are big trucks made by Ford that many people use for work or driving around. They are very popular and have been sold for many years.
The Ford F-Series pickups are big trucks that many people in America buy for work or daily use. They've been the most popular trucks for a very long time because they can carry heavy loads and are reliable.
The Toyota RAV4 is a very popular small SUV that many people buy because it is reliable and easy to use. Sometimes it’s hard to find one to buy because so many people want it.
The Mazda CX-30 is a small SUV that looks nice and is fun to drive. Right now, there aren’t many of these cars available because fewer are being brought into the country.
Tariff costs are extra taxes that a country charges when bringing in cars from other countries. This can make the cars more expensive or harder to find.
Day supply means how many days it would take for a car dealer to sell all the cars they have if no new cars came in. If the number is high, it means there are a lot of cars sitting unsold.
Incentivizing sales means car companies or dealers give special deals or discounts to help sell more cars. Sometimes they do this more or less depending on how many cars they want to sell.
Tariffs are extra taxes that countries put on things they bring in from other countries. For cars, this means it can cost more to make or sell them if parts or cars come from somewhere else.
The Mazda CX-90 is a big and fancy SUV that Mazda made to be more luxurious and comfortable. It has lots of new features and is good for people who want a nicer car with more room.
Volvo is a car company from Sweden that makes cars known for being very safe and comfortable. They make SUVs and other cars and are working on electric vehicles.
The Subaru Outback is a type of car that can handle rough roads and bad weather well, which is why many people like it for adventures. The newest version costs more because it has new features and improvements.
The Subaru Ascent is a bigger SUV that can fit more people, like a family car. The newest version with all the extras costs a lot because it has many features and is very safe.
The Acura RDX is a small fancy SUV that is comfortable and has lots of nice features. The 2025 version has even more upgrades, so it feels more special and nice to drive.
Sometimes when you buy a car, you don't have to start paying for it right away. You can wait a few months before making your first payment. This is called deferred payments.
The Lotus Europa S is a small, fast sports car made in Britain that is fun to drive because it handles really well. It’s special because not many were made, so it’s a rare car.
LIVE
Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right
person comes along, which is why you should try Zip Recruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com
slash zip.
Zip Recruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you, it finds them for you.
Its powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites
them to apply to your job.
You get qualified candidates fast, so while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey,
Zip Recruiter finds you what you're looking for.
The needle in the haystack.
See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate
within the first day.
Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire, and right now you can try Zip Recruiter for free.
That's right, free at ziprecruiter.com slash zip.
It's noon here in Ventner City, New Jersey, and our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.
And this is Carage Live for another rainy, miserable day here at the Jersey Shore with
your hosts, me, Ray, here in Ventner City and Zach hanging out with his apartment in
D.C. How are you feeling today, handsome, better, I hope?
You know, I went for another run this morning and I got to tell you, I am not 100%.
I am definitely sick.
My heart rate was super frigate high.
Yeah, anyway, I'm getting better.
Maybe I need to give myself some rest.
We do not rest here, however, at CarEdge.com, the sponsor of today's program.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, my dad and I are so proud that for the past six years
we've been able to wake up every day and tell hundreds of thousands of people annually to
go to CarEdge.com to get car buying help.
We offer a car buying service.
We take care of research, dealer outreach, and even negotiation.
We learn what matters to you.
Contact dealers can parallel offers and help you get the best deal without the stress.
Really grateful for everyone that supports us back at CarEdge.com.
Again, a friendly reminder, we have a new product in beta.
It's the CarEdge dealer ratings platform.
Just Google search CarEdge dealer ratings or CarEdge dealer reviews and it should pop
right back up.
What you do here, folks, is you search either an area or a brand.
Let's do Kia, dad.
Let's shop some Kia dealers really quickly.
You can probably go limited data, non-limited data.
You're going to find dealer reviews and dealer ratings, but these are not your normal dealer
reviews.
These are database.
You can see here Kia of Canton in Michigan is a 100 out of 100 verified transparent dealer.
What that means is that the quotes we've gotten from this dealership when we've reached out
to them, they don't have any BS on them.
They're good quotes.
You can see here, no add-ons, just a doc fee, really good stuff from this dealership.
You can use this information as well as see full negotiations back on the CarEdge.com
slash dealer dash ratings website.
We seek out and value your input and feedback.
Dad, you ready to jump into today's show?
With both feet, buddy.
All right, pops.
We had a really, really, really rough February for the auto industry and that is starting
to show up in particular with a handful of brands.
Use US New Car Market loses traction again in February.
There are a couple brands in particular, Dad.
Ford, Subaru and Mazda that are heading backwards, not forwards in terms of vehicle sales.
I want to spend time on each of these as well as, I didn't even put it in the title of today's
show, but we're going to talk about it, Stellantis, Dad.
Stellantis is coming out with a big, big, big promotion for the month of March 90 days
without payments to try and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of
America.
Let's start here, Dad.
You're overall synopsis of February New Car Sales in the United States of America.
What is your read on what happened?
It was a tough month.
January and February, one of those months is going to be the slowest month of the year.
It always is.
It always has been.
My prediction is it always will be.
And so February was a bad month.
It was not a good month and part of it was weather related.
Part of it is affordability related.
Part of it is incentive related.
And part of it just absolutely remains a mystery to me.
And the reason I say that is I know we're going to look, say, at Ford sales.
And one of the reasons that Ford's sales were down is the sale of their F-series pickup
trucks were down considerably.
And then you look at Toyota, whose sales were up.
And the main reason their sales were up was because their pickup truck sales were up.
So why suddenly is the F-series finding difficulty in getting additional traction?
And Toyota is gaining traction.
So there's really some interesting data within this subset of data.
All right, well, let's start here, Dad.
Let's just go through the numbers of how various automakers performed.
There are the three that I named in the title of today's show.
One of those is Ford, Dad.
Ford sales year over year for the month of February down 5.5%.
And so far for the year, they're down 5.3%.
That's a big, big deal, especially because, obviously, like you mentioned,
some of their competitors, Toyota, for example, not seeing sales declines like that.
So, Dad, Ford down 5.5%, what was most surprising in that, obviously,
your take was on the F-150s.
We know Ford still has 10,000 plus leftover 2025 F-150s out there for sale right now.
So Ford's struggling to sell the leftover F-150s as well as, obviously, the new F-150s.
Their sales being down, though, 5.5% year over year, was that a surprise to you?
Yeah, because we know that the F-series pickup truck traditionally has been
the number one volume selling vehicle in America forever.
There was one year where I think Toyota beat them out with either a RAV4 or I think it was the RAV4.
So it's unusual for the number one volume pickup truck in America and we're talking about America
where pickup trucks and SUVs are the main mode of transportation for many, many people.
So it just seemed odd to me that the decline for Ford would be in their most popular vehicle.
That didn't necessarily make a lot of sense to me.
Now, could it be because they're just so damn expensive?
I mean, the average transaction price on Ford pickup trucks, if I remember correctly,
excuse me, was approaching $68,000?
Yeah, for F-series pickups, yep.
That's a lot of damn money.
But then again, Toyota pickup trucks aren't cheap and their sales gain,
one of their sales gains was in their pickup truck.
One of their big sales declines at Toyota was in RAV4.
But that's because there isn't enough of the 2026 newer model that's available yet.
So you can understand why there would be a decline in RAV4 sales
when there's an availability issue.
But there's not an availability issue for the F-series.
Let's pick up trucks for a second here.
There's two things that I want to highlight.
One is, I just said there are more than 10,000 left over 2025 F-150s.
I'm light. I'm very light.
We have this back on thecaredge.com slash guides.
That's where we publish all of our free guides.
2025 Ford F-150 dead.
Not only are they offering 0% financing for 60 months,
plus $1,000 truck month cash, plus no payments for 90 days.
So Solantis is not the only automaker right now offering no payments for 90 days.
There are 28,000 left over 2025 models left unsold in 2026.
That's a huge problem for Ford.
Justin on our team pulled together an incredible blog earlier this week.
Truck prices are rising 40% faster than blue collar wages.
This is at its core why truck sales are finally starting to slow down
here in the United States of America for the domestic automakers.
Dad, look at this chart.
Not only is this showing you average truck MSRPs versus the average blue collar wage
in the United States of America, the red line is average truck MSRPs.
The blue line is the average blue collar wage.
Those used to have a gap between them.
Now they do not. So that's obviously concerning.
Even more concerning, Dad, is this chart that Justin pulled in here.
Look at this, Dad.
This is your MSRP increases over the past decade from 2014 to 2024.
The F-150 Lariat increased in price 77%.
Oh my goodness.
From $38,155 to $67,490 again to tie it all back together.
Ford, Subaru, and Mazda can't lower prices fast enough.
We're going to talk about Subaru and Mazda in a second here.
Just sticking with Ford, sales down over 5% year over year.
Their truck prices, at least in the F-150 Lariat's case,
up 77% over a decade.
No wonder we're in the situation that we're in.
Well, yeah, and wages haven't increased 77% in the last decade.
This can also tie into what yesterday's conversation was,
and that is that more and more people are looking at extended loan terms
in order to make these vehicle purchases appear to be affordable, even though they're not.
But it gives the appearance of having an affordable monthly payment.
It's just stretched over seven or eight years as opposed to five or six years.
So, yeah, I guess to a certain degree, Ford has shot themselves in the foot a little bit
when it comes to how dramatically over the last decade, they have raised the prices of.
77% man.
I mean, that's absolutely nuts.
And to your point around loan terms, this is another headline in automotive news this morning.
More people are talking about it.
More buyers look to longer auto loan terms to afford record new vehicle prices.
And before you go off on this headline, Dad, the first subheading here is,
savings now doesn't pay off in the long term.
So, obviously, there are people getting the message.
But let's continue here, Dad.
Back to February, new vehicle sales in the United States of America.
So, that's the Ford story.
Tremendous price increases.
So far in 2026, a slowdown in sales.
Let's turn our attention, Dad.
We'll do Mazda next because Mazda's right here.
Their sales flat year over year.
And when we look for the first two months of the year, January and February,
they're down 7.1%.
So, Dad, Mazda, what's the story at Mazda?
Maybe this is a good moment for us to think about asking Joe Lewis from J.C. Lewis Mazda
to come back on the program sometime soon.
What's the story at Mazda?
Did they run into the same conundrum here of raising their prices,
and now they're not selling as many vehicles?
Well, I think that's part of it.
And they've limited the imports of some of their lesser expensive vehicles,
like the CX-30s.
They've limited that inventory and the imports of those
because of additional tariff costs associated with them.
Sure.
What I would say, just at first blush, if you would go back to that chart.
Yeah, of course.
And the reason I'm going to ask you to do that
is sales for Mazda were down one-tenth of a percent.
For February.
February.
For the first two months.
7.1% for the year.
So, February was a much stronger month for them than what January had been.
The bulk of their sales decline for this year occurred in January.
So, maybe, just maybe, they're seeing a slight uptick in purchases and customers coming into
the showrooms.
I think when we look at these numbers in April, that will give us a clear indication as to
whether or not that's the actual case.
But it appears as if that February for Mazda was a month where they made up the deficit that
they had seen in January to some degree.
I'm now curious.
So, I just ran over to the car edge, car search dad.
100,000, 101,235 new Mazdas for sale nationwide right now.
I'm curious how many leftovers there are.
You know me.
I love the leftovers.
You are the leftover king.
19,000.
20% of their inventory, 19% of their inventory are leftover model year vehicles.
These would be the ones that the manufacturer, the dealer, everyone involved is going to be most
interested in trying to sell quickly, bigger discounts, etc.
So, yeah, I mean, they still have a significant amount of their inventory, dad,
leftover not too dissimilar from Ford, the story that we were just talking about there.
And we know, even though sales showed improvement in February over their January sales,
we know they're not being particularly aggressive in their incentives for the month of March.
I think it was the CX-50, which has a very unhealthy day supply,
which I think was approaching somewhere around 150-day supply of 2026 CX-50s.
And if I remember correctly, they were offering, was it 3.9% for 36 months or 1.9% for 36 months?
But let's face it, if you're looking at a vehicle that's ultimately going to come in
around $40,000 with taxes and everything else, you know, a 36-month note is going to put those
payments well in excess of $1,000 a month. Yeah, 155-day supply, 16,000 unsold CX-50s,
and the offer from Mazda is 1.9% financing for 36 months. The issue there, obviously,
hey, if you can afford a monthly payment stretched out over only 36 months, that's great, but many
people we know, even at 1.9%, would not be able to afford that. That'd be $1,000 a month most
likely. Yes, or slightly in excess of $1,000 a month. So yeah, that would be difficult for most
people to be able to afford. So are they not incentivizing sales as much in March because
they saw that uptick in February? Or are they not incentivizing sales as much in March because
they're still trying to cover the costs of tariffs that impacted their earnings last year?
Some manufacturers have more cash on hand than others and can weather a storm
like this better than others. And Mazda is still a relatively small player
in worldwide when it comes to manufacturing automobiles. And God knows, let me say this,
if I may. Yeah, sure. Nobody wants Mazda to be more successful than I do in the sense that,
as you know, I drive a CX-30. I happen to love it. I think for the most part, Mazdas are a great
value. You get typically more bang for the buck. And we know that two years ago, two and a half,
three years ago, Mazda decided that they were going to go more upscale. They wanted to increase
their profit margins. And so we started seeing the updated CX-90 and the CX-70 and those are
larger vehicles with higher profit margins. And Mazda was gracious enough to give you a
press vehicle to use last year, which was a CX-90 Phev. And that was as disappointing
a vehicle as I've ever been in from a brand that I was rooting for so hard. So I think they've made
some errors in judgment along the way. And I think that is part of their issue as well.
Nobody does selling better than Shopify. Shopify is the home of the number one checkout on the
planet and the not so secret secret, with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%,
meaning way less cards go abandoned and way more sales going through. So if you're into
growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers
are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between.
Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify.
Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that Skims uses.
Sign up for your $1 per month trial period for three months at Shopify.com
slash Westwood One, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash Westwood One to upgrade your
selling today. Shopify.com slash Westwood One.
The sun shining, birds are singing and all feels right in the world.
Until the season changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact,
one in five people experience some form of depression no matter the season or time of year.
At the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, our vision is to build a mentally
healthy nation for all, because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year
round. Please visit mentallyhealthynation.org to learn more. Now let's turn our attention to
Subaru. This is probably the most surprising and concerning data on the chart. Actually,
Volvo being down 41% is probably the most surprising, not that surprising, but concerning.
Subaru is surprising because their sales were down 8.2% year over year for the month of February
and they're down 8.6% so far in 2026 compared to 2025. The reason this is surprising and concerning
is because Subaru has come out and said that their playbook moving forward is to sell more
volume. They're trying to sell more vehicles and quote, make it up in volume. Well, Dad,
they're moving backwards. The strategy is to get their cars sold and sell more of them,
but the data that we have is that it's not working. Maybe they have to cut even deeper
on price and incentives. This is super interesting. We do know that Subaru was one of the most
aggressive brands when it came to raising MSRP's in relationship to how tariffs were impacting
the cost of their vehicles because the vast majority of their vehicles are manufactured in
Japan. They have the facility in Indiana where they build vehicles and they're going to increase
production there to help offset some of the tariff costs, but they were one of the most
aggressive when it came to raising prices to cover the costs of those tariffs.
It seems to be coming back to bite them. They are another brand that is typically known for
their quality. It's a niche brand in the sense that those who have Subaru's love Subaru's,
they have a cult-like following, but even their prices have gotten to the point where
it is not as affordable an option as it had been. Now, the other concept of what we're going to
make it up in volume only works when, well, you actually make it up in volume and they're not
doing that. Yeah, look at this coming from space. Space runs the community forum back at CarAge.com
slash community. Told you about Subaru, incredible to see cars sit even with 0% financing for 75
months and 10% off MSRP. Again, the title of today's show was Ford Subaru Mazda can't lower prices
fast enough. I think all three automakers that we've covered dead, they can't lower their prices
fast enough. That's what this all indicates to me is they've operated in a way that has set
themselves up for failure. That's the reason they're selling fewer vehicles. You've been doing this
longer than anyone in history. How do you sell more cars? You're lower the price. You got to lower
and I've told this story. I worked for a regional vice president at the Penske organization and he
said, well, if your customer hasn't said yes yet, it's only because you haven't lowered the price
enough yet. At a certain point, you'll lower the price enough where the customer will go, okay,
I'll take it. You can be aggressive with your incentives like Subaru is,
but I am not sure that potential Subaru customers see that aggressiveness as covering the
increase in price enough to still make it seem like a fair value. I think even in today's world,
what they offer and what you get with a Subaru at their price point is still a fantastic value
compared to some of their competitors. For instance, the Forester Hybrid, which they're
moving production of that to Indiana because they want to compete directly against the RAV-4
hybrid and the Subaru will come in several thousand dollars less than the RAV-4
and the RAV-4 will outsell it, I don't know, three to four to one. It is so hard to figure out
consumer sentiment and why suddenly they abandoned one brand that they've been extremely loyal to
and moved to another. Even with higher prices, they're still relatively inexpensive compared
to their competitors in their segments. I want to show you an example data of how you can use the
new CarEdge dealer ratings program product to help you make a smart Subaru buying decision.
Go to caredge.com slash dealer dash ratings and under dealers, click on browse by brand. From there,
click on Subaru. We have 279 dealers nationwide ranked from over 1,088 verified OTD quotes.
I went ahead and I scrolled down and I clicked on one in particular dad, Sarasota Subaru. They
have a C grade in terms of transparency down there in Florida. The reason I clicked on this one though,
however, is this negotiated amount. You can scroll down to recent quotes on all these pages
and from the recent quote section, you can see the amount that was saved. You can then also click
on and view the original quotes. For this particular dealership dad, this is back in January,
so about two months ago, they were selling a new 2026 Subaru Outback and you can see the first
Out the Door price quote they gave a customer was $49,071.83. If I go back here, I can see
after negotiations, the final Out the Door price was $45,833.53. This is the type of intelligence
that you can find and information you can find back on the dealer ratings program.
Again, you just scroll down to the recent quotes and you can actually view the quotes
showing the savings from first pencil to last pencil, first Out the Door price quote to last
Out the Door price quote and you can even obviously see what type of fees the dealerships are adding
on so you can know to maybe avoid a dealership or do business with a different dealership.
That type of big discount though dad, you can have the prices I was talking about. That's
what's necessary to sell these cars. I get it, but let me temper that with one thing.
Sure. It is so much easier to discount a vehicle $1,600 some dollars when you're adding $998 in
your profit in a dealer dock fee. That's why that dealership has a C grade in there in Florida,
for sure. So you can look at it and you can say, well, you're being kind of transparent.
But they have, when it comes to offering a larger discount, they have a $1,000 cushion to play with
before you say hello. For sure. For sure. For sure. But the point being,
they're dealers trying to make deals on these vehicles. Let's come here dad. Yes.
From Lego Joe, we appreciate the kind contribution. Thank you Joe. I've bought,
sold and traded Subaru's from 2000 to 2025. 2026 Outback fully loaded is $55,000, no thanks.
Ascent can hit almost 60,000 yikes. That's crazy. I mean, I would have never guessed
an Outback could be $55,000. And at $55,000, I agree with you. I ain't buying an Outback.
I'll go buy something else. Look at this dad. Look at this from Bourbon. Thanks for the kind
contribution, Bourbon. Exactly Lego Joe. I saw the same and bought a 2025 Acura RDX Advanced
Spec cheaper and through CarEdge. Cross shopping a Subaru with an Acura, what a time to be alive.
Yeah, that is kind of crazy. That is an indication where, to a certain degree,
a manufacturer has lost their way. Thinking that their customers, I mean, it's got to take
extremely loyal customers to suddenly be willing to pay $55,000 for an Outback.
Now, I get that that's the most loaded Outback you could get, but still, $55,000, that's just,
that's beyond belief. Especially when you, I think of an Outback and I'm thinking,
okay, top-end trim might be 40 grand. I'm only off by $15,000. That's an astronomical sum of
money to be spending for an Outback, in my opinion. Well, dad, it's not just your opinion. The data
suggests that it is that way too. 8% sales decline year over year over at Subaru when
they've made it their mandate to sell more volume of vehicles. It's not just you saying
that that's an astronomical sum of money. It's our own community. It's obviously the shoppers at
large. And quite frankly, it's a wake-up call for Subaru and for Ford and Mazda as well.
The only thing we know that can ultimately help them sell more cars, lower the prices.
Yeah, but you know, at $55,000 for the top-end Outback, I don't know that you can lower the
price enough. It just seems like it is so far removed from what a Subaru Outback should cost
that you'd have to drop it 10 grand or more to get somebody to go, yeah, okay, I could entertain that.
That leads us to the other story that I wanted to bring up today, which is a brand we haven't
mentioned yet, but Stellantis, dad, they're doing this big push for the month of March,
which remember a moment ago, we were talking about over at Ford and to be clear here,
all these incentives and things like that, Carage.com slash guides, or if you have a
Carage account, you get our weekly newsletter email. We actually just sent it out today, dad.
Did you know there are 49, 0% financing offers for the month of March?
I did not. I do now. 49. The most we had last year was December and I think we had 41 or 40.
We have the most 0% financing offers we've seen in the past year and dad,
Stellantis is getting it on the fund as well. They're offering a bunch of finance incentives,
but they're also doing no payments for 90 days. They're branding this the Declaration of Deals
promotion. I don't want to call this desperate because this is just leveraging a milestone,
leveraging a holiday, but they're coming up with creative ways and offering these deferred payments
for 90 days. Obviously, 49 other 0% financing offers out there right now. They're not just
Ford, Subaru, and Mazda who can't lower prices fast enough. This is being felt more broadly
throughout the auto industry. When you do the 90-day delayed first payment,
what you're saying is we understand the vehicles themselves are not affordable.
We can create the belief that they are affordable by not charging you any interest on the loan
and then giving you 90 days before you even have to make that first payment.
I think the hope is that the customer is going to save up over those 90 days so they'll be able
to afford to make that first month's payment. The reality is the customer will not and will just
think to themselves, well, I'm driving this car for free for the first three months.
It's a marketing ploy that works. Let's face it. I saw a comment today and somebody asked,
well, when they give you a 0% interest rate, what's the buy rate? Well, okay, I'll help you. It's 0.
Okay. So, I mean, they are doing their best to create the illusion of affordable payments.
Ford's doing it. Stalantis is doing it. Yeah. I mean, everybody's doing it. I think it's
remarkable and wonderful that these manufacturers, especially one like Stalantis who's
headquartered somewhere in Europe that wants to do deals celebrating the 250th anniversary
of the United States of America. I see the humor in that. Most people probably don't.
But listen, if you're not waving the American flag during our 250th anniversary celebration,
you're doing something completely wrong from a marketing standpoint.
Good luck selling your pickup trucks if you're not offering some incentives around the 250th
anniversary. Hey, shocker, Dad, we'll probably be offering some sort of incentive back at caredge.com.
We're going to come back to the chat here in just a second. But again, a friendly reminder,
my dad and I for six years now with our incredible team have been offering a car buying service.
We take care of the research, dealer outreach, and even negotiation on behalf of customers.
For you to know what matters to you, contact dealers, compare real offers, and help you get
the best deal without the stress. I encourage everyone to learn more about our services
back at caredge.com. Dad, last year in July, we launched an AI negotiation service. I just
want to put it in the perspective here, y'all. We're up to $18 million saved for caredge customers
that are using Car Edge Pro. That means from the first outdoor price quote to the last outdoor
price quote, $18 million saved for caredge customers. Just yesterday, Dad, 421 new AI
negotiations got started and 102,797 dollars in savings were realized from first out the
door quote to last out the door quote. It's really incredible what we've built here. We've
negotiated on 384 million dollars worth of vehicles. Guys, we are super transparent here.
29% of customers that didn't get savings, $0 in savings. The AI agent tried its best,
humans tried their best, the dealers didn't budge on price. The other 71%, you can see
the distribution in savings right here. It's pretty cool the time-as-money concept as well,
the fees getting taken off, the accessories, et cetera. Really awesome stuff that we provide
under reports and the negotiation impact reports. I encourage everyone to take a peek at that.
Dad, let's come here from Rich. We'll end the show on the note. Appreciate this, Rich.
I found a vehicle that Ray may enter with Elam in style. No doors you climb through the windshield.
The Dodge Diora. You ready for this? Yeah. Here we go. I'm waiting for Rich to suggest the
Lotus Europa. I almost bought one of those ones. Dad, this thing looks crazy.
Yeah, probably explains why it didn't sell.
Yeah, no, that must have been one of those future project cars. Yeah, that must be
their take on the El Camino without doors. Yeah, interesting. Thank you, Rich.
Hey, Rich, do you spend your evenings just trying Google searching cars Ray would never know about?
Hey, I can't wait for tomorrow to see what happens. Folks, speaking of tomorrow,
we'll be back at 12 p.m. Eastern with more Car Edge Live. Please tune in. Subscribe to the channel
if you haven't already. Check out the website. We appreciate everyone that supports me and my dad
and our awesome team. We're back tomorrow with more pops. You look good and green. Enjoy the
afternoon. Well, thank you. You look good in whatever color that is and you enjoy the afternoon as
well. The sun's shining. Birds are singing and all feels right in the world until the season
changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact, one in five people
experience some form of depression no matter the season or time of year at the American
Psychiatric Association Foundation. Our vision is to build a mentally healthy nation for all
because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year round. Please visit
mentallyhealthynation.org to learn more.
About this episode
The discussion centers on the challenging February sales for Ford, Subaru, and Mazda, highlighting Ford's significant struggles with leftover 2025 F-150 trucks and a 5.5% year-over-year sales decline despite aggressive incentives. Rising truck prices, which have increased much faster than blue-collar wages, are a key factor in slowing sales. Mazda faces inventory constraints and tariff impacts, with sales down 7.1% year-to-date but showing signs of improvement in February. The episode also touches on Stellantis' major promotion offering 90 days without payments and the growing trend of longer auto loan terms as buyers try to manage record vehicle prices.
Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest February car sales data. Tune in to learn more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
for information about our collection and use of personal data for
advertising.
