Mitsubishi dealerships are the local stores that sell Mitsubishi cars. The segment says some dealers aren’t doing well and are trying to get out by selling off cars quickly.
Fleet buyers are companies that buy lots of vehicles at once for their operations. The segment says Mitsubishi’s sales were heavily weighted toward these bulk buyers.
Liquidating inventory means getting rid of unsold cars fast, usually by discounting them. The segment says some dealers are selling for less than what they paid to try to leave the business.
Invoice is basically the dealer’s cost for the car from the manufacturer. “Below invoice” means the dealer is selling for less than their cost to clear out inventory.
Stellantis is a big car company. Here, they’re working with Jaguar Land Rover to build cars together in the US, which could help them avoid extra import taxes.
Jaguar Land Rover is a luxury car brand group. In this story, they’re partnering with Stellantis to work on cars in the US, which could reduce the impact of import taxes.
Import tariffs are taxes added when products are brought into a country. The idea here is that building cars in the US could help avoid those extra costs.
A non-binding MoU is basically a “we plan to talk and maybe work together” document. It shows intent, but it usually doesn’t force either company to actually sign a final contract.
Antonio Filosa is mentioned as the CEO of Stellantis. The segment says his plan focuses on partnerships to help improve the company.
Car
Mercedes-AMG GT four-door coupe
Mercedes-AMG just revealed its first electric performance car: a four-door coupe called the Mercedes-AMG GT. It’s meant to be a serious, high-performance EV, not a basic commuter electric car.
An all-electric performance car is an EV that’s built to drive fast and feel sporty. It means the car is powered only by electricity and is aimed at performance, not just commuting.
Formula One is the highest level of race car driving. If a car says it borrowed tech from Formula One, it’s usually talking about advanced engineering ideas that come from racing.
Car
AMG-1 hypercar
The AMG-1 hypercar is Mercedes-AMG’s big, top-tier EV project. Bringing it up suggests the new Mercedes-AMG GT four-door coupe is using some of the same advanced EV tech ideas.
Term
VA engines
They’re talking about the kind of engine layout AMG has used—an engine that makes a loud, growly sound. The point is that an electric car won’t sound like that.
Porsche is a well-known sports-car brand. In this segment, they’re mentioned because Porsche is planning electric performance cars that will compete with Mercedes-AMG’s EVs.
A service bay is like a garage stall inside a dealership where a car sits while it’s being repaired. If a repair takes a long time, that stall can’t be used for other cars.
The GDSI program is mentioned as a possible program that helps pay for dealer upgrades. The question here is whether Hyundai is helping fund those renovations through it.
The Hyundai Palisade Calligraphy is the top, nicer version of the Palisade SUV. In this segment, it’s the car that had a suspension problem and then became hard to fix because parts were delayed.
Self-leveling rear shocks are the suspension parts that help keep the back of the car from sagging when you’re carrying people or cargo. If they fail, the car’s ride can get out of balance, and it can be a big deal to repair.
A warranty is supposed to pay for covered repairs. But even with warranty coverage, you can still get stuck waiting if the required parts aren’t available.
A back order means the dealership has requested the part, but it isn’t available yet and will be delivered later. In this case, the parts delay is what kept the vehicle from being repaired even though it was covered under warranty.
JD Power rankings are a score based on what car owners say about their experiences. Here, they’re used to judge how well Hyundai’s service is going compared with other automakers.
“Bays” here refers to service bays—work bays in a dealership or service center where technicians work on cars. The claim that 4,000 bays have been online for years suggests Hyundai is expanding service capacity to reduce delays and improve customer experience.
LIVE
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Welcome to Daily Drive for Wednesday, May 20th, 2026.
I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, Mitsubishi's US dealer network
is shrinking fast.
Jaguar Land Rover teams up with Stellantis on US vehicles
and Ford's chief marketing officer is leaving.
Plus, Hyundai is overhauling its service operations
after ranking at the bottom of customer satisfaction surveys
for nine years.
She was angry, frustrated, disappointed,
and you could hear it in her voice.
That is what bad service looks like.
And Hyundai knows this,
and they are making it a big priority
so that there are no more Cheryl Nichols out there.
Let's run through all the news you need to know
to keep up in the auto industry.
Mitsubishi's US dealer network is shrinking fast.
Since early 2019, the brand has lost 56 stores.
That's the third biggest drop among mainstream brands.
Mitsubishi dealerships are averaging
just 15 new vehicle sales per month.
To address that, the company's cutting low performers
and trying to recruit stronger operators.
But dealers, they're frustrated.
According to data reviewed by Automotive News,
nearly 60% of Mitsubishi's first quarter sales
went to fleet buyers.
Some dealers are so fed up, they're just walking away,
liquidating inventory thousands of dollars
below invoice just to get out.
Jaguar Land Rover is teaming up with Stellantis
to co-develop vehicles in the US.
The move could give the luxury brand access
to Stellantis factories in America,
helping it avoid import tariffs in its biggest market.
For now, the two companies signed
a non-binding memorandum of understanding,
but they're staying quiet
on any manufacturing partnership.
It's the first US deal for Stellantis CEO, Antonio Filosa,
who made it clear partnerships are central
to his turnaround strategy.
He'll share more details
at a Capital Markets Day on Thursday.
And Ford's Global Chief Marketing Officer,
Lisa Montorazo, is leaving the automaker June 1st.
Montorazo came from Toyota three years ago
and launched Ford's first brand campaign
in more than a decade.
Ready, set, Ford, which rolled out last September.
Ford isn't saying why she's leaving.
Dean Stoneley, Executive Director
of Global Product Marketing,
will step in on an interim basis.
And those are today's headlines.
You can find more details on all those stories
at AutoNews.com.
Mercedes-AMG just unveiled
its first all-electric performance car.
The GT four-door coupe will have more than 1,100 horsepower
and technology borrowed from Formula One
and the AMG-1 hypercar.
Our own Jack Wallsworth was on site
for the reveal in Los Angeles
and spoke with our own Jake Nier
about what makes this different
from Mercedes' earlier EV efforts.
Jack Wallsworth, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Hi, Jake, good to be here.
So you got to go out to LA to check out this Mercedes EV.
I'm curious, I mean, this is a fascinating vehicle.
How does this fit into Mercedes' electric vehicle
and electrification goals?
What are they hoping from it?
And what were your impressions?
Yeah, I would say this is Mercedes AMG's first
electric vehicle.
So AMG is the other performance, basically sub-brand.
So from that standpoint, it's a pretty important vehicle.
I think a lot of the Mercedes execs yesterday
talked about how they've got like a feedback
on this car from development.
The big thing will be like,
can this win over AMG customers?
AMG vehicles for decades have been known
for their very loud, growly VA engines,
which this vehicle obviously does not have.
So it kind of seems like this model in particular
kind of will serve as almost like a test balloon
to see what AMG customer demand
will be for electric vehicles.
EVs, by nature, have quick acceleration,
are speedy.
So it seemed like Mercedes really had to amp it up,
not to be too punny here,
but amp it up a little bit higher
and make the experience worthwhile
or worth AMG customers to make that jump.
So it kind of seems like testing the waters in a way
and Mercedes AMG does have some more EVs coming.
So again, kind of seems like this will be the first step
in a longer journey.
But yeah, it's got all the performance specs, super quick,
super loud design colors, all that good stuff.
So it looks like an AMG, feels
how customers accept it or not will remains to be seen.
This is so fascinating to me
how they are putting so much emphasis
on the performance here.
Mercedes says this architecture is designed
for outputs over 1300 horsepower.
Just walk us through a little bit,
what that means for where AMG is positioning itself
in this space, especially against competitors
like the upcoming electric Porsche models
and other EVs that are really meant to capture
the interest of real enthusiasts, I would say.
Yeah, I mean, those numbers are eye-popping, like you said.
And the ones that the vehicles that we'll launch
won't have quite as much of that power.
There's still one of 55 will have nine under our power.
And the more powerful GT63 will have
about only 1100 horsepower, which is still a big number.
But yeah, I mean, those figures are, I think intentional
because that's an easy way to get someone's attention
who's used to driving vehicles
with a lot of power under the hood from an engine.
So in a way, it seems like they almost had to use
kind of like a audacious amount of power
to really get their foot in the door at least
or get the door opened.
And yeah, as we're seeing from other performance brands,
huge horsepower numbers are,
it's almost like a space race type thing
where one automaker releases a car
with X amount of horsepower,
and the next one has 50, 100, more than that.
So while Mercedes probably has, is on the higher end today,
who knows, six months a year from now, where that stands.
It's one of those things that people expect
an AMG vehicle to have a lot of power,
but it seems like Mercedes is really leaning
into the EV aspect of the car.
And with the motors, the E motors that they're using,
those power figures just go up to like these kind of,
insane hard to comprehend type figures.
And I think that kind of speaks to maybe,
they're trying to reach people that way.
You can hear more about Mercedes AMG's new EV
on this week's bonus episode of Daily Drive.
That'll be available Sunday morning.
Coming up, Hyundai's plan to fix its service problems.
That's next on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive.
I'm Kellan Walker.
Hyundai has been at the bottom
of JD Power customer service satisfaction surveys
for nine years.
Even as its sales have surged 36% over the past decade.
Now, the automakers rolling out new initiatives
to overhaul its service operations,
including mobile service vans and programs
to help dealers run more efficiently.
Our own Richard Truett has been reporting on this story.
He spoke with our own Jake Nier
about what went wrong and Hyundai's plan to fix it.
Richard Truett, great to have you back here on Daily Drive.
Thanks, Jake. It's great to be here.
So you recently reported on this story
that Hyundai is overhauling its service operations.
What's going on?
Few companies have been more successful
in the United States than Hyundai.
Their sales have increased about 36% in the last 10 years.
And if they have overlooked something,
it's the fact that the dealerships were not set up
to handle such an increase in volume.
And for about the last nine years,
they have been at the bottom of the JD Power customer service
satisfaction surveys.
And that's a very rare thing for Hyundai to be so low
because they get all their vehicles, well, not all,
but many of their vehicles win awards for car of the year,
truck of the year.
I mean, they are building great stuff.
But when it comes to getting them fixed,
they've really dropped the ball.
And so what they're doing is starting this summer,
they're rolling out a bunch of initiatives
to try to fix that.
About 150 dealers are going to put some mobile service
fans on the road.
The goal of that is to take work away from the dealer
and bring it to the consumer so that they don't tie up
service space.
And they're going to help dealers figure out
how to run their service departments more efficiently
in every part of it in terms of when someone calls to set
the appointment until they hand the car off.
Because every time that there is a lapse in efficiency,
it slows the whole operation down.
And here's the thing that makes Hyundai a little bit
different, Jake.
When you buy a car today, it's going to have a five-year,
60,000-mile powertrain warranty and a three-year,
36,000-mile bumper-to-bumper.
Hyundai doesn't do that.
Hyundai offers a 10-year, 100,000-mile powertrain
warranty and a five-year, 60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper.
What does that mean?
I mean, they have more cars out there under warranty
than just about anybody else.
There's like 9000000 Hyundai's on the road,
and a lot of them have warranties in effect.
And when something breaks, they're going to go back
to the dealer.
Bottom line, Hyundai dealers have been overwhelmed
and they can't keep up.
Hyundai's trying to fix that.
It's sort of a good problem to have,
unless I'm not correct about this,
that what's really driving this is just this 36% increase
in sales since 2017, right?
Well, Jake, it's good when you sell a lot of cars,
but it's bad when you can't fix them,
because dealers are afraid that if they can't get cars fixed
and people back on the road quickly,
they're going to lose customers.
I had one dealer tell me that a customer is only
a sales customer for one day when they buy the car,
and then from that day forward, they're a service customer,
and they have to take care of that customer
or else they're going to lose them.
Hyundai understands the importance of this,
and I think they've got both barrels loaded
and they're gunning to get this fixed as quickly as they can.
Why did it take so long?
Well, they had to put in place the infrastructure
to get this fixed before they could start
rolling out these programs.
Now, for about the last five or six years,
Hyundai dealers have been building new stores
with bigger service bays, and there are about 4,000
more service bays online today than there was back in 2021.
So now they have the infrastructure there,
now they can start rolling out the procedures
to start filling up these bays
and getting cars fixed quickly and back on the road.
Let's talk a little bit about the engine recall factor here.
You write that the engine failures and recalls
have cost Hyundai more than $5 billion
and can tie up a bay for two days per repair.
How much of the service crisis is directly attributable
to those engine issues versus just being overwhelmed
by pure volume?
You know, I can't give you a percentage,
but I can tell you that the Hyundai executives
I spoke with recognized that that was one major reason
why their service satisfaction plunged
because when you have a car that needs service,
you've got to call up and make an appointment
to get your car in.
But if they can't give you an appointment
for three weeks out, what are you gonna do?
You got a broken car, you gotta get it fixed.
An engine replacement is amongst the most labor-intensive
repairs that a car dealer can do.
They really don't wanna do that kind of work
because it takes a service bay offline
for a couple days to make that switch.
And Hyundai has had many engine problems
going back now about maybe about 13 or 14 years
and they've largely gotten that stuff fixed,
but there's still the lingering effects of that
and they're working through it.
You spoke with Jeff Rosen.
He's Hyundai's dealer council chairman.
You know, he added 10 bays and saw immediate improvement.
So sort of a success story
in terms of what you're talking about.
But dealership renovations aren't cheap.
We know that.
What's the investment dealers are making here
and is Hyundai helping fund these upgrades
through the GDSI program?
No, I don't believe Hyundai is,
but the payoff is that as we've reported previously,
Hyundai is in the middle of a major, major expansion.
They're going to be a full-line automaker in the US
with trucks and vans and they're gonna be like,
you know, in terms of Toyota,
they're gonna have a vehicle for everybody.
So these upgrades that dealers are making
are not only an investment in providing better service,
but they're also an investment for the future
because Hyundai is preparing for a major increase in volume
with all these new vehicles coming
and dealers have got to be in a position to service them.
And I believe that the GDSI stores
will give them the square footage
and the ability to take care of customers
in a timely manner when these new vehicles
start hitting the road.
Maybe to highlight the importance of that,
can you tell a Cheryl Nichols story?
It's a pretty brutal example here.
Yeah, you know, when I was writing the story,
I was looking at numbers on a page
and then Jake, we've all suffered bad customer service
from somewhere.
We've hung on the phone and phone mail menus
and talking to AI chatbots.
You know how frustrating that is.
I wanted to put kind of a human spin
on what bad service looks like.
Cheryl Nichols is a photographer in Mobile, Alabama
and she and her husband paid cash for a Palisade calligraphy.
That is the top of the model, most luxurious Palisade
that they make, $60,000.
And two years into the ownership,
the self-leveling rear shocks failed.
And they were under warranty, no problem, right?
Wrong, big problem.
Hyundai couldn't get the parts.
And so they said, if you drive the vehicle,
you could possibly damage it.
Now they had another car, so she parked the car,
I believe it was in late February.
And she called the dealership every week,
have my parts come in, have my parts come in
and they would say, no, they're on back order.
And she called Hyundai's corporate
and they could not give her any information
on when these parts would be delivered.
She told me that in late May or early June,
she's heading up to Michigan on a long road trip
for a family vacation.
And she finally got tired of waiting
and she traded the Palisade in on a smaller Santa Fe,
which is not something that she wanted to do,
but she needed a vehicle and she couldn't wait any longer.
And so she was angry, frustrated, disappointed
and you could hear it in her voice.
That is what bad service looks like.
And Hyundai knows this and they are making it a big priority
so that there are no more Cheryl Nichols out there.
Yeah, and on that note, Hyundai seems pretty optimistic
in their tone about how quickly they'll be able to solve
these problems or at least improve on them.
They're saying that two years from now,
they'll be climbing back up the JD Power rankings.
What's your sense from talking to executives and dealers,
how realistic that is given,
how far they've fallen so far?
You know, if you're an executive at an automaker,
you don't want to make a prediction that you can't meet.
And I believe, actually, Jake,
that they're gonna do it before that
because the data that you see on JD Power
is what they call trailing data.
It is from last year or maybe the year before.
They've already started instituting some of these programs.
Those 4,000 bays have been online now for a couple years.
I would bet that when the next JD Power
customer satisfaction survey comes up,
you might see Hyundai move up a little bit.
But if you're Hyundai and you're an executive
talking to the press, you're not gonna make any promises
that you're not exactly 100% sure that you can keep.
So I think that with the programs that Hyundai is rolling out,
that they're gonna eventually get there.
They totally get the importance of doing this
and they have an executive who did it in Canada.
The Canadian market had some of the same problems
and he was able to fix it up there.
And so they imported him to the US to do the same thing here.
So they've got a good plan.
Can they make it work?
If I'm a gambling man, I'm gonna say yes.
You're ready here first, Richard Pruitt.
Thank you so much for joining us on Daily Drive.
Welcome, Jake.
That's Daily Drive for today.
I'm Kellan Walker.
Thanks to Automotive News journalists,
Jack Wallsworth, Ervash Kakaria and Michael Martinez
for their reporting for today's podcast.
You can get the latest news
on Hyundai's service overhaul, Mercedes AMG's new EV
and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
Let us know what you think of the show
and the topics we covered today.
Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com
or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
And if you enjoyed the podcast, remember to like,
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Thank you.
About this episode
Deal and service operations take center stage as Hyundai overhauls its service model after years at the bottom of JD Power customer satisfaction surveys. Hosts connect the problem to dealer capacity, appointment delays, and even recall/engine-repair bottlenecks, while also discussing fraud risks in deal processing. Elsewhere, Mercedes-AMG unveils its first all-electric performance car, the GT four-door coupe, positioning it as a Formula One– and AMG-1–inspired EV test of whether AMG customers will embrace electric performance.
