Nenni on AI Traffic, Maher on Recall ROI, Studebaker on Selling 700 Cars/MO | Daily Dealer Live

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Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to another episode

of The Daily Dealer Live.

I'm your host, Sam Dark, and welcome, everybody,

to this space where automotive comes together

to learn, to share, and most importantly,

to execute.

Thanks for choosing to be here on this Friday,

January 23rd.

Coming up today, how is your dealership

showing up on AI search,

particularly open AI, chat, GBT, and others?

Does it show up?

Does it not?

We'll dive into that debate.

Plus, we'll get a end of year recall recap.

And then finally, we'll delve into Subaru Out West.

Good friend of mine, Rob Studebaker from Boise, Idaho, will join.

But first, let's dive into today's auto industry headlines.

First up today, some good news.

Updates to the tax code under President Donald Trump's

big, beautiful bill is poised to create larger refunds

for consumers, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley.

Tax refunds for US filers are expected to jump.

Get this 15% to 20% this year.

We've talked about this many times on the show,

which could push the average refund to over $4,000.

It's one of the highest levels on recorded record.

And as we all know, bigger refunds always mean

more consumer spending.

Of course, not every filer will benefit to this degree,

but the Q1 windfall for dealers could be meaningful.

Next up today, a class action lawsuit has been filed

in federal court accusing Ford of underpaying

warranty reimbursement claims.

This in violation of New York dealer law,

which requires OEMs to pay rates comparable to retail work.

The lawsuit alleges Ford reimbursed only a fraction

of what dealers charged for their parts in labor,

leaving one store underpaid nearly $300,000

and another more than $615,000.

A large share of the dispute of claims involved

EV battery replacements, which can cost $20,000

or more per vehicle and represent some of the most

expensive warranty repairs dealers perform.

The dealers argue Ford is trying to control EV losses

by limiting battery reimbursement,

effectively shifting high-cost EV warranty risks

from the automaker, the OEM, to the retailer

for decline to comment on the case,

but dealers across the network will be watching closely

to see whether reimbursement rules further change.

Next up today, Toyota Honda and the Japan Auto Parts Industries Association

are organizing a joint chip supply program

with about 20 semiconductor suppliers

to prevent another Nexperia-style disruption.

You'll remember that earlier this year

and how it disrupted the supply chain

here in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Nikkei reports, the group includes Renassus,

Rome, and Germany's Infineon

and is designed to cover 80 to 90%

of the semiconductors used by Japanese automakers

while excluding Chinese chip makers.

The move comes after China-based Nexperia

suspended chip shipments during a dispute

with Dutch authorities forcing Honda and Nissan

to cut production and scramble for workarounds.

In response to the Nexperia disruption,

some automakers have been buying semiconductor wafers

directly from Nexperia's European operations

and shipping them to China themselves

just to keep the lines running.

But Honda, for example, is already estimating

that chip shortages tied to these disruptions

will cut 150 billion yen

or nearly a billion dollars from operating profit

through full year 2026.

So semiconductors and chips continue

to have an impact on automotive.

Next up, if it feels like every new chart or graph

is warning that the auto lending market's about to snap,

well, you're not alone.

Others are thinking the same thing.

Some of that concern is real.

Subprime delinquencies are elevated

with 30, 60, 90, and 120-day buckets

sitting near cycle highs.

But the stress, we need to note, isn't spreading evenly.

Prime loans still outnumber subprime roughly 4 to 1

and prime performance remains well within historical norms.

More importantly, delinquent loans are not converting

into charge offs at alarming rates,

suggesting lenders and borrowers are still finding a way

to work things out.

At the same time, credit is actually becoming easier to access

this according to DealerTrack and their

Credit Availability Index, which just hit its best level

since late 2022, driven by better loan pricing

and higher spreads, not a reckless rush into the risk.

What's the bottom line here?

Well, this is a market under strain.

Welcome to January 2026, not one that's breaking.

Risk is being contained, seemingly.

Credit is still flowing and lenders seem to be adjusting.

And finally, up this Friday, Volkswagen is flattening

its leadership structure across several of its core brands,

putting one management team in charge of several commercial offerings.

The change is already underway and is expected to be finished

by July.

Volkswagen says the goal is to speed and cost savings

with about 1.2 billion in cuts targeted by 2030.

Under the new setup, each brand keeps a lean executive team,

CEO, Finance, HR and Sales, while production, engineering

and procurement are now managed across brands

instead of independently.

As part of the consolidation, roughly one third of board level

and management roles across those brands are being eliminated

as decision making is centralized.

As the open question is execution, though,

if this actually shortens product cycles and simplifies sourcing,

dealers could eventually see tighter lineups

and more coordinated launches.

And that's a wrap on today's industry news.

Julie, welcome back.

Hey, Sam.

Hey, as we go through and we talk about a reorg of Volkswagen,

the thing that just is in my mind, we've had many guests on the show,

including conversations we had earlier this week,

but Don Hall, Virginia Auto Dealers Association,

scout that direct to consumer thing that Volkswagen is trying

to make happen.

We talked to Alan Hague who said, look, this is a problem.

The industry needs to fix for it.

Don Hall says it's not going to work.

Don and I had a text conversation over the past couple days.

He's like, do you realize there's other states

that are allowing this DTC thing to happen with scout motors?

Utah being one of them, the state I'm from.

I'm baffled at how they continue to persist.

And then there just aren't the alarm bells across automotive

that I would expect to see, Julie.

Why aren't more people up in arms about this?

And do you think this management change with Volkswagen

might signal a turn in their strategy?

Maybe they come back to the franchise model even with scout, Julie.

It would be nice to see.

I mean, $1.2 billion in savings is a lot.

I don't know what that structure looks like.

But to your initial question, why aren't more dealers

sounding the alarm bells?

I'm not really sure.

Because this is a massive, massive deal.

It's a massive, massive deal.

Yeah.

So anyway, we'll watch this.

We'll keep you, our daily dealer live audience,

posted and updated on all things related to this.

By the way, we are live across all social media platforms.

No matter where you are watching, we'd love to have you join in the stream.

Ask questions as we're live, and we'll take all of those conversations,

bring them into the show, and it will further enhance

and make this program even more elite.

But let's start out with another topic that is hot right now in automotive.

The question is, does your dealership show up in AI Search?

Let's bring up George Nenny, founder of Generations Digital.

George, welcome to the show.

Hey, George.

Thank you for having me, Sam.

Hey, we appreciate you being here.

So it's interesting.

Let's actually just dive into it.

We reported here at CDG News an insight from a tech company that basically said,

most dealer sites don't exist to AI.

They're just not showing up.

You actually had a counterpoint to that.

You said, I don't think that's as true as some would claim.

Tell me about that.

Do dealers show up in AI Search or not?

Yes.

I mean, dealers definitely show up in AI Search.

If you ask AI, show me all the Chevrolet or who are all the Chevrolet dealers

in the greater Cincinnati area, it can do that.

It's not great at location.

So it may not know which one's closest to you because it doesn't sound really proximity based.

But yeah, dealers show up.

So yes, when I read that post, I thought we do a ton of these searches

and we measure the inbound AI traffic for tons of dealers.

And we see it ebb and flow.

And so I knew, we don't see any dealers with zero chat GPT traffic.

Yeah.

I think something most dealers are concerned about today.

I think we figured out Google.

At least Google does change the rules often.

And so we're trying to keep up in that world.

But AI, chat GPT, co-pilot, some of these other AI driven search engines,

there's less understanding behind what it takes to rank high

and what it takes to show up continuously.

Do you have in January 2026 a few key findings to help dealers show up better in this AI search, George?

Yes, definitely.

So a year ago, gaming the AI, gaming chat GPT was much easier.

So a year ago, we were building content pages, community involvement pages,

philanthropy pages for dealers, because it was very easy to kind of expand the typical about us page into three or four pages.

And we're not an SEO company, but we would direct the SEO company to create that content.

And within a week or two, when we then prompted chat GPT, show me all the Honda dealers in the Greater Chicago area,

we would see our dealer prominently show.

And in fact, they would reference the exact text, the exact SEO text.

So that grew nicely.

And so for most dealers, traffic from chat GPT grew and then peaked in September.

And for almost every dealer, it's about the same.

And if you ask chat GPT some of these questions around links, they did a fundamental change around September, October,

where they still show dealers, they just show less links.

And I did a bunch of tests yesterday looking for lease specials in various areas.

And it's hard to find a link on chat GPT today.

So when people talk about, hey, maybe they might start offering ads,

I think that'd be great news for anybody looking for clicks.

Because right now, you know, the clicks are largest dealers and we have some of the largest dealers in the country get 150 clicks from chat GPT every month

while they get, you know, almost 10,000 organic search clicks.

So it's, I think organic search is safe so far from chat GPT incoming traffic.

So you mentioned a news item we reported on last show on Wednesday of this week,

which is open AI has announced that they'll begin selling ads in chat GPT.

They'll start it with a pilot.

I think it is next month here in the United States.

And then if it works, they'll expand it.

One fear is as they start to sell advertising, it will make open AI chat GPT co-pilot and others less credible sources.

What's your take?

Do dealers win in this space?

And how do you jump in early so that you get the benefit of that early curve?

Yeah, I think for dealers, it's most important for them to, you know, when they think about their keywords or paid keywords or their organic keywords,

which I feel should be the same, same type of keywords, their brand, their name, the dealer, dear me, new cars, used cars, fixed stops.

So for me, they go into five categories.

You know, AI really doesn't play in very many of those.

If you do those kind of searches, Chevy dealer near me or Nenny Chevrolet or, you know, new car, new car searches, used car searches,

you might get vehicle listing ads, you get lots of results.

You typically in chat GPT, you don't get those links, you don't get those listings.

And so I think it's kind of warding off where do I want to show up and for what type of searches and then trying to win those.

And then on those content pages, then take that consumer on to look at other other things because one of the one of the biggest challenges for dealers who buy SEO is a lot of SEO providers will instead just build content pages,

Silverado bed lengths, all the error codes on a BMW.

And it's super easy to get clicks from SEO.

I mean, it can any any SEO company can get you traffic.

Can they get you local car shoppers is the biggest challenge.

And so I think it's looking at those down funnel keywords and saying, in most cases, those searches may happen in Google, maybe they happen in chat GPT.

Google is going to deliver more local results and deliver more links to the dealer.

And I mean, Google and Apple deal honestly with with chat GPT, I mean, I think chat GPT chat GPT's value went down dramatically a few days ago,

because that deal with, you know, with with Apple and Google really locks them out and locks in Google and Gemini and you saw Google stock price.

And so if I'm a dealer, I'm really focusing probably more on Google Gemini and that visibility.

And then tangentially, if that helps me on chat GPT, you know, so be it.

Why?

So a lot for a lot of people, myself included, when you think of AI search, you think of open AI and chat GPT first.

Though I've had many coworkers and other people in the industry that are like, hey, look, co-pilot's better.

Google's got a better tool.

Why does a why does chat GPT seem like the gold standard for AI to kind of the lay person?

And you mentioned changes on the horizon in that power balance.

You know, maybe give us a little bit more understanding of this deal you just talked about and why you would go all in towards Google AI as opposed to chat GPT in search.

Yeah, I mean, chat GPT was the first entrant.

And so they won that that early entrant market share.

There's tons of examples of companies who have been the first to enter in and had success.

And then and then the others come in and trounce.

But I think from chat GPT, their biggest challenge is, you know, how can we get users and how can we grow users?

And then, you know, users will tend to depend on us to be able to get results.

And so I think, you know, most most search begins in Google.

Google is a default search engine on iPhones.

And so, you know, I think chat GPT is already boxed out because of that because they just have that less visibility because they're not on the desktop.

And they're not to default, you know, search app on your phone.

That deals gigantic.

I mean, I think Apple thought they could go it alone in AI.

They lost a ton of talent.

And some of that talent, you know, went to Google went to went to chat GPT.

You know, that that that will really solidify Gemini's position in terms of search.

And it also kind of from Apple's perspective says we give up, you know, for now.

For chat GPT, I think they now have to just make sure that they can they can continue to gain gain users and relevance at a time when when they're being boxed out by manufacturers.

I read this morning that chat GPT feels like, you know, they hired Johnny I from Apple and they're going to be releasing either an iPhone or an AI device, a pinnable device or maybe some earphones, some chat GPT earphones that they're working on for the end of 2027.

But, you know, now they're looking at entering the hardware business to compete, which is a much, much better entry.

How did Apple get so far behind?

So what's Apple's AI tool called?

George, I think Apple intelligence was supposed to be in 2026.

And is that the most disappointing AI entrant into the marketplace?

Like you think of Apple on your iPhone and it doesn't even know that it's at this point.

Yes.

Yeah.

So you talk about you talk about use, whether or not the the app is native to a program like Apple or Google.

Like I have open AI on my iPhone because and it in my iPhone will clunkily search open AI because its own embedded AI that was supposed to be this great thing that turned colors when Siri accessed it.

That was just a nothing burger like it just did nothing.

And I don't think that helps us in automotive, but it also is interesting when you think about how dominant Apple is in the iPhone or in the phone space.

It's a disconnect between dominance and just not winning George.

Yes.

I mean, I think it is probably very hard for any very large company to grow in the same way they've grown in the past.

And there's there's people that would argue that Apple hasn't hasn't really delivered any new hardware or new platform groundbreaking platform since the iPhone, you know, since Steve Steve Jobs left.

And so, you know, it's them trying to pivot into an area that they didn't have expertise and didn't have success and then lost talent around the same time when when people were getting big paychecks to join AI companies.

So probably maybe too conservative of a take who knows.

So you mentioned you've noted in the past chat GPT and some AI traffic peaked in September, and that the traffic is kind of on its way down.

You talked a little bit about this.

What are the most likely reasons for that decline in traffic?

Seasonality, product changes, attribution quirks.

What's the biggest reason behind that, George?

I wondered if it were users.

So I started searching for a lot of data on users, you know, chat GPT users.

You know, I don't know what if they use the same integrity that other apps use in terms of, you know, their subscribed users.

And then just began to look for links and just doing some of the same search as we've done in the past and just seeing very few links.

And so chat GPT answers things for consumers, but they don't they don't help dealers out in terms of traffic.

Maybe that would help them in brand loyalty.

The consumer goes into a browser and then fires up that dealer's website to be able to seek their inventory.

But that is, I mean, for a dealer, just go into Google Analytics, go in the reports menu and click on the traffic acquisition report.

And then just it'll default for you with a little search bar.

Just put a chat GPT in there and just see how much traffic you get to canned report.

I think I put it on my LinkedIn post.

You should be able to see that yourself and then just trend it out for the last 12 months and send me a screenshot if yours is growing.

But we have most peaking in August or September and then dramatically dropping off.

So I'm almost getting no traffic in December.

We'll take that challenge and actually copy us on as you do so.

We'd love to continue this conversation about AI search.

So based on your expertise and your experience, if there are three fixes that dealers could do in the next 30 days to improve their AI discoverability.

What would those three fixes or those three action steps in January 2026 dealers could take to maximize AI search and their efficiency and ability to show up in that search?

Okay, yeah, that's a great question.

I love that.

So I would say the first would be, I would take your about us page and I would expand that into at least three pages, community involvement, philanthropy donations, all the things that you do.

You know, AI loves chest thumping.

And so awards that you've received, those sort of things all need to make sure that they're in there.

And you can even ask the AI engine, you can say, you know, what awards accolades community involvement do you know about this dealership that's not on their website and they'll show you the exact delta.

So you'll know where where you need to go and, you know, you may be donating to a company who's giving you praise on their page, but you haven't copied it and have that same content on your site.

That'd be the first one.

The second one would just be, you know, really inspecting the traffic that you're getting and figuring out, you know, why you're getting certain, like we have dealers that get a lot of lease traffic, a lot of lease through chat GPT.

So those least pages must be indexed.

So double down on that figure out how you're scoring and then try to improve upon that.

Then the last one is, I think, I think to some degree why everybody's chasing all these AI shiny objects.

I would double down on local SEO, because, you know, SEO is a three-legged stool today, right?

We have traditional SEO.

We have local SEO, which is Google business profile.

And now we have this new thing, AI SEO, you know, local SEO is unaffected so far by chat GPT or AI search, because it's not good at proximity.

It doesn't know where you are.

It doesn't know where the nearest places are.

And it doesn't have reviews.

And so syndicated that same way.

And so I would double down drive five star reviews to your service page, to your parts page, to your main sales page, and just outperform your competitor while they're fooling around, you know, with shiny objects.

Driving five star reviews from your dealership will always be important.

It's still important with AI SEO and with local SEO.

It's the dominant piece of the algorithm.

So George, a good question online.

Then we'll have our last question, but Paul Salisman says, what's the percentage of search traffic that's coming from AI in general?

Paul Salisman asks.

If it was a percentage of search, maybe a tough ratio.

I mean, if it's 150 sessions, and if a dealer gets 10,000, I don't know, what is that, a tenth of a percent?

I mean, it's super small.

It's barely measurable.

It's, you know, that's why I say it when people talk about, and you hear these, when you go to NADA dealers, I mean, this is a time when you have to get references.

You have to double down.

You have to find dealers that are using the tech because I just feel like there's, there's a lot of folks that are pitching things.

And I just, they look a little flaky to me or when you ask, like they don't have any dealers and they're trying to get their first dozen or so.

And so I just think you really have to ask those questions and test it and make sure it's going to drive results.

I love that thought because everything that glitters truly in 2026 is not gold, right?

And, and, you know, you go to some places where everybody's trying to sell a solution.

You're going to hear a lot of solutions that don't solve a true problem that exists.

So let's take the reverse side of the three fixes in the next 30 days.

What's the biggest AI visibility mistake you see big dealers making today?

And maybe it sounds like one might just be focusing too much on it and not focusing enough on traditional search.

But George, any other big mistakes dealers are making and they have a visibility January 2026.

Yes, I would say the biggest mistake for AI SEO and it would probably affect other SEO channels as well is just leaving the canned content on your website after your website launch from one of the major providers.

So, you know, when you launch with a website with some of the major automotive providers, they're going to build out your site and try to make sure you have SEO.

But the content is probably going to be duplicate content that exists on three other Chevy dealer.

So go to your service page, go to your service scheduling page, go to your community page or about us page and make sure that it's original content.

If you're not sure how to figure out if it's original content, you know, grab a little piece of it and then search for it.

And if you find every other Chevrolet dealer and in the US, then you know that that's canned content.

And then just be authentic, be yourself, create a personality for the dealership in those about us and in those community pages,

story tell. And then, you know, over time, you're going to you're going to then begin building content, answering questions that people will have over AI,

that your dealership could solve and then and then eventually, you know, delivering them a car.

All right, George, I said last question, if we can be brief, like 10 seconds or so, Lauren Klein just asked a great question.

Lauren Klein, longtime listeners, she posts often.

How is social media playing in the AI search results because a lot of social media out there, a lot of content for AI to troll.

Does does AI play a role in the or does social media play a role in the AI search, George?

That's a great question. I don't think that I even I have the knowledge to answer, Lauren, because I don't see those citations.

Like when I do AI search or when I do traditional search, I mean, it's rare to see social citations.

I mean, sometimes you'll see Facebook citations for like dealer, you know, name, address, phone number, like their dealer page.

But you typically don't see posts that I see very often.

And so, you know, perhaps you AI is able to unlock that, you know, those social signals more typically they just don't show up in the first few pages of search.

It's a great question. Lauren Klein, thanks for it.

And George Nene, thanks for responding to the LinkedIn post from several days ago.

Appreciate you coming on the show to provide your counter perspective to look, dealers do show up in AI search,

but maybe we're making much ado about nothing until it develops and evolves.

And it's going to be exciting to see maybe we'll have you back once the paid piece starts to pay off in the AI search

and then how we as dealers can maximize on that.

But George, thanks for being on the show.

Fander's Generations Digital. Appreciate you being here.

Thank you for having me. You guys do a great job.

Thank you.

It's a fun conversation. I debate this all the time.

I'll get with, you know, advertising companies that will come in and have conversations with us.

I'm like, all right, Google, that's great.

But how are we showing up on on AI, open AI and some of the other platforms?

And maybe it's, you know, given traffic going down as George says,

maybe it's a trend that's going the other way than what we would anticipate.

I'd love to see some of the results of our users or if our listeners do this test that George suggested,

take it, text it into CDG or you can reach out to me on my LinkedIn page

or send it to Hannah or Michelle.

And we'd love to continue the conversation on there. You really, right?

And just goes to show you how context matters.

I mean, if he's saying 150 searches or AI compared to 10,000 clicks,

it's maybe not as big a deal as everyone's making out to be.

Something an important takeaway that not enough people are talking about though

is driving those five-star reviews, though, to your parts and service department.

That is low hanging fruit.

Yeah. And that's less AI and that's more block tackling X's and O's, right?

Awesome. All right. Let's talk in Pell briefly.

Today's episode is brought to you by Impel.

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Learn more by clicking the link in the show notes below

or you can scan, oh, it's the other way.

You can scan the QR code here.

You can learn more about Impel. Impel will be there at NADA.

Excited to connect up with the entire team there.

Impel's got a great bulletin in our own auto group.

We use it as part of CDK's CRM eLeads, which they call now CDK CRM.

But Impel has a product there that's available through that

and it's been a pretty cool tool we see a lot of benefit from.

So thanks to Impel for sponsoring today's content

and supporting that conversation that we just had on AI Search,

which I thought was super fascinating.

Thank you, Impel.

All right. Next up, let's turn to Ryan Marr, CEO of BusyCar.

Ryan, welcome back to the show.

Ryan, you've been on the show many times

and you're one of the busiest guys in all of automotive.

Not only are you affiliated or associated with a Missouri-based auto group,

but obviously you are a BusyCar and, you know, BusyCar, you are busy.

Yeah. So how's biz, Ryan?

It's good. And it's good to be busy.

131 hotel nights last year, I think we were tracking.

We're getting some mileage in.

You've got to be out with the dealers.

You've got to find out what they're dealing with, right?

You know what the gold standard is, Ryan?

When I worked for Zurich and I was traveling all over the country,

the gold standard I felt was ambassador status with Marriott.

So when you hit that, that's pretty cool.

And then we went into COVID. It didn't mean anything, but yeah.

The coolest thing for me will be when they don't know my name anymore.

So that's what I'm going for.

I got three young kids at home, so at some point it'll...

You want off the road.

I want to be there more often.

Yeah.

Well, hey, last time you were on, we talked to Recalls.

Give us a little bit of a recap on 2025 as it relates to Recalls.

And in particular, just shaping it a little bit,

Ford was the number one most recalled OEM last year.

What's your take on that as we wrap out 25?

And what do you foresee coming up in 2026, Ryan?

Yeah. So 28.4 million recalled vehicles last year.

Ford was about 12 million of them.

So the numbers are big.

26 million recalled cars in 2024.

So there are some big numbers out there.

If we look at the total population today of recalled vehicles,

a little over 62 million.

And we get all this recalled data from the OEMs direct.

And so we keep our eye on this.

And it's about one out of four cars on the road today.

Not quite.

Somewhere between one out of four and one out of five.

So massive, massive issue.

How did Ford do?

Yeah, there are some challenges.

I know they're working through.

They're trying to fix some quality stuff.

A lot of these recalls, they're pretty quick to get repaired.

You got to get them into the store.

But a lot of quality improvements, I know the OEMs are working on.

But from a dealer perspective, not a terrible thing to deal with.

Right. There's an opportunity.

It's interesting.

On our best of episode recap that we played New Year's Eve,

Grant Cardone, we had him back on.

And he reminds in automotive, we create opportunity

in some of the biggest challenges.

And when I think about the Ford recalls,

I think about how Ford incentivized mobile service

and really leaned into helping dealers reach out to customers

and really provide a great experience,

which I think is a separator between good and great in automotive.

Do you have any tips as we think about 2026

from your perspective at Busycar

to help dealers create a better experience for their consumers

and ultimately own lifelong customers instead of people

who are frustrated that they have to do a recall?

Yeah, it's 2026.

I think it's going to be a breakout year for mobile.

I still remember talking to my dad and my brother in our stores

four or five years ago.

Hey, guys, I think we should do mobile.

They thought I was crazy.

Look who's crazy now.

It is.

And Ford's been good with the subsidy.

I'm curious how long that'll last.

And we'd like to hear somebody opine on that.

But what is it?

What are consumers want?

Tesla and Rivian offer mobile repair.

And I think if we want to be competitive in that EV space,

we've got to take this on.

If you are thinking about mobile service as comparing it

to main shop, not worth it.

It is the numbers don't pencil.

You have to compare mobile service to express or quick lane.

And that's the hook.

That's what we're using.

Those are tools that we use for retention improvement.

Recalls are a great place to start that.

Very easy to go to consumers.

Very easy to go to other businesses, other locations

where you can take that mobile truck and knock out those recalls.

It's a great way to get your mobile program up and running.

I do think 2026 without overcooking this today,

we'll have some announcements coming up at NADA.

But almost every OEM will have a mobile program by the end of this year.

So whether or not dealers want to do it,

the analogy my dad always used was service managers 25 years ago,

they didn't have express.

You didn't go to the dealership to get your oil changed.

And what we've realized is it's a retention tool.

Recalls are for retention, mobile services for retention.

That's really what we focus on on the busy car front

and making it easier for consumers.

So speaking of retention, as we talk often, we always talk recalls,

this year you're focused into a broader outbound service.

Your focus has changed a little bit to include outreach,

not just servicing recalls.

Tell us a little bit about what prompted that

and what you're doing as we head into 2026 as it relates to outreach.

Yeah, I mean, as you know, I'm a dealer.

I didn't want to be a vendor in the auto space.

It's sometimes a brutal place to be, especially if you're...

But on both sides, I know exactly what you mean, yes.

Yeah, dealer has a bad month.

They can't yell at their customers,

so they're going to punch their vendor in the teeth.

But it is definitely one of those things

where we had a real pain point with recalls,

with Takata recalls six, seven years ago.

And so we built busy car around a pain point,

which was make this easier.

We started getting into mobile because there was no mobile vendor.

There was nobody that made scheduling and route optimization,

so we got into that.

And then there's a lot of companies that are moving into the AI space.

They're trying to... I mean, I was just looking at NADA.

I think there's something like 48AI.AI vendors or something this year.

Great, it's good to see that the market get validated,

but I think what we're hearing from our customers is,

they just want an easy button.

I don't want to understand AI right now.

I mean, every day you turn on the news and there's like a billion new features,

and nobody can keep up.

So what our customers have been telling us is,

hey, can you just do this, this great recall product you have?

Can you do this for other parts of our business?

And we're like, sure.

So we started working on it and we realized, oh my goodness,

there's a huge pain inside of dealership world

for clicking the easy button and just making other service appointments show up.

Yeah, by the way, we've seen that in my own at Ziggler.

We have multiple stores that use your outreach product and it's text outreach.

It brings that customer in and they show up even to the extent

some of them we've never done business with, it just kind of pops in.

AI truly is revolutionizing how we do business in automotive.

And I'm curious, you hear that first conversation we had.

We transition into this one.

How do you see the role of AI changing over this next year

and when you talk about other areas of business,

what are the other areas of business you're focusing in, Ryan?

Yeah, so we're focused on fixed ops right now.

That's a good place for us to be.

We are going beyond text.

We're taking a very omnichannel approach through social media channel,

through email and through voice.

But I think to answer your question,

I think there's two things that we need to be thinking about this year.

One is the compliance train is coming.

And regardless of all this great tech that's coming out,

I think we got a favorable administration.

It's trying to stay away from this regulation,

but we're seeing it on a state level now.

So dealers need to be asking those questions like,

how does my state regulate or how are they thinking about regulating AI?

Am I talking to a person?

Is that something we're going to have to be upfront about?

So I think there's going to be in 2026, maybe not a lot this year.

I think you'll see it more at the end of the year.

Compliance and regulation are coming on how we deal with AI.

Because it's getting scary, right?

Like you can make a video or a text.

Am I talking to Sam or am I talking to a clone of Sam?

And I think the second piece you're going to see is just a tremendous amount

of data is required to make this work.

And people are starting to put up gates.

We were just listening to George talk about how is AI working with SEO?

A lot of companies are starting to put up gates.

And this free-for-all moment of this data is out there for everybody.

I think that's going to start coming to an end.

How will that regulation look, Ryan?

Like what proactively, you know, AI search, AI integration tools and whatnot?

You know, I'm fascinated because I can't imagine legislators understand

how it works well enough to create rules that make sense.

And I think if there will be laws that regulate it,

there's got to be some pretty smart people, well-educated people that are involved in that.

Otherwise, you're going to have a lot of unintended consequences, Ryan.

Yeah, we're already seeing it in Texas.

You know, there are, which kind of surprised me.

You know, you would think maybe New York or California would be the first to strike there.

And some of the AI texting laws, some of the engagement laws on how you work with AI.

I mean, this is going to become a thing this year,

where you just don't have unfettered access to reaching out to consumers.

And it's going to kind of be like the can spam and the TCPA laws.

Those are going to start to get enhanced.

And whether or not it happens at the federal level or not,

you're going to start to see it at the state level.

It's already happened.

Like the legislation has already passed.

And we'll see if it stays.

Yeah.

Yoga Cars has a great comment.

Yoga Cars says it'll probably be something like this.

Quote, this call is recorded for training.

This is a virtual agent, right?

So some sort of revelation as to it's not a live person.

You're engaged with AI.

But then to your point, Ryan, fascinating as AI collects all that data,

how does it store it?

What rules govern its storage?

Who's responsible?

Is it the dealer?

Is it the AI client?

Is it someone in between?

I think there's a lot that will have to be uncovered.

So let's turn back though, Ryan, to your experience of Busy Car.

You guys have serviced over 600,000 vins and generated well over a quarter billion dollars,

300 million in revenue.

What have you guys learned at Busy Car about what actually drives customers back into service,

which is that area you're focused in with your AI tools?

Yeah.

So dealers have a hook with recalls.

You can only get the recall repaired at a franchise dealer.

So it's the ultimate retention tool.

And really the area where we're living is, you know, dealers are tired of, you know,

take my DMS data and just farm it out, right?

There's a lot of dealers that believe they can do this on their own.

And where we live now is we are bringing customers in that have not been in store before.

So that's been a really valuable play for us.

The second thing that's happening in kind of Busy Car land is we are seeing a tremendous

amount of those cars customers not just retain, but actually buy cars.

And that's been shocking to us.

We started digging into this data back in July.

And what we started seeing is anywhere between 5% and 8% of the customers that we're showing

up, we're buying cars.

And that's a huge number when you consider, I don't know what your customer acquisition

cost is now, national average about $718 per VIN.

And if you can do this through, you know, a recall engagement, that's massive.

That is huge.

And so we're really excited about what that looks like.

And we're going to be exploring that a lot in 2026.

So probably additional tools to help kind of maximize that impact is out your thinking,

right?

Oh, yeah.

I think, you know, come on, I'm dealer all the way through.

There's a way.

You know, the first question my dad asked me when I call him on the way home, it's not,

how was your day or how many cars did you sell?

Right?

That's right.

Yes.

Nothing happens.

You know, we're really curious about what that, what, you know, how do recalls in car

sales?

What's the parallel path there?

Yeah.

So you're making announcements at NADA.

How can folks find you at NADA once they're out there?

We're back this year.

No snowstorms, please.

Not Vegas for heaven's sakes.

Oh my God.

It was last year was tough.

We are at NADA.

We got a, we got a, we got a big booth.

We got a whole team out there.

You can find us at busycar.com or all of our booth information's there.

I think we got about a hundred customers.

We're meeting something for a day.

We're excited.

We're trying to, there's a lot of buzz going on out there.

And we'd love to talk to you about recalls and service.

So Ryan, you're always an excellent subject matter expert on all things recall.

So let's just do a quick shameless question.

This one's a softball.

So you and your company, as it relates to the outreach and recalls,

and then it sounds like even just that additional 10% sales on the recalls,

you guys guarantee a four to one ROI.

Let's do the shameless plug.

How do you define the ROI at, at busycar?

Ryan, and what's included in that calculation?

Last question.

Yeah, I don't, I don't like vendors that come in and say,

we're going to promise you the world.

Okay.

Yeah.

So we put our money where I'm at this.

You spend a dollar with me.

I got to bring you $4 back.

That's our guarantee.

And it's, it's never been a challenge for us.

If anybody's got a, got an issue, they know they,

I put my cell phone number out there, text me, call me, let's get it fixed.

But yeah, four to one ROI guarantee.

It's a combination of recalls plus, plus any upsell.

And we make it easy for dealers to win.

Yeah.

And your experience in our world has been really good with the GMs that have said,

Hey, I see value in it service managers.

You know, they'll turn around 30, 60, 90 days later, they'll be like,

that's interesting.

Like it actually.

Outreach scheduled line product up so that when that vehicle is in the bay,

the part was actually there.

And then we're going to get more creative and exact about calculating that sales

once they're in, because that 10% fascinates me.

How do we at our auto group track that measure and then lean in even more to it.

So looking forward to great conversations at NADA.

Right.

Our CEO busy car.

Thanks for being on the show today.

Sharing your perspectives on all things recall.

And thanks for letting us go to Ford a little bit too.

I know that.

You bet.

Good football weekend.

That's right.

We'll see you there.

10%.

Is that what he said?

10% on, on recalls.

On conversions.

Yeah.

Five to eight, five to 8%.

But yeah, that's a big number.

And you know what?

We like to round up.

And it's the inverse instead of it costing you to get the customer in,

you're getting paid to get the customer in and then they're converting.

So an example of AI truly, truly working.

So all right, let's continue onward.

Let's turn to the Western United States.

Boise, Idaho, Napa, Idaho, actually to be exact.

Rob Studebaker, general manager of Treasure Valley Subaru.

Rob, welcome to the show.

Hey, good day guys.

Thanks for inviting me.

We appreciate you being on.

So Rob, the question we start with everyone except our last two guests

because they were in the vendor spaces, how's biz?

And then for our audience that may or may not know you,

tell us, tell us a little bit about yourself.

How's biz, Rob?

Biz is robust.

You know, used cars are red hot first of the year.

New cars tend to fall off and we were expecting it a little bit,

but we finished with a lot of fervor in the 13th month.

We're proud of that.

But I was really enjoying your guests.

So I just wanted to make sure I pointed out that I got a lot from George and Ryan.

Yeah.

And that was fun there.

He didn't take too many shots at Ford.

I will.

No, I'm just kidding.

I'll tell you the AI debate is fascinating and the recall debate is fascinating.

You're a Subaru dealer here at the Zigglerata Group.

We have four Subaru stores.

Love them.

Rob, for our audience, what's Subaru getting right now in 2026

that most other OEMs are missing out on?

I've been with Subaru 20 years and I've said one thing that Subaru gets right

is they know how to market.

They know who they're talking to.

A lot of OEMs haven't quite found, figured out who they're talking to.

Subaru figured it out years ago and they're not breaking that message.

They're getting after it.

So we followed that and if you watch anything that we do on the face of this

dealership and we do a lot with dogs.

So Subaru has the Barclays and the Barclays are all retrievers of some kind

and they're the puppies and there's also the parents that you see in their commercials.

And so everything we do, you'll see Treasure Valley Subaru has my face

and dogs and we try to stick with that theme because people are so fragmented.

It makes a lot of sense to stay with one theme.

So we've taken that from Subaru, you asked me what Subaru's getting right.

Obviously they nail it with their all wheel drive and they've got a product line.

The cars aren't terribly pretty.

They didn't make them look like Corvettes.

Some of the world's greatest appliances, to be honest with you.

And they've created a great tradition around safety and value in economics.

Jeff Walters, we're hoping to have him on the show at one point just to talk about

as a company, their strategy, how they lean into the Subaru Love Promise.

More than payments online.

You'll see reliability with consumer reports more than you'll see dollars cost.

Rob, you've got a fan club out there.

Bailey Grace posts in, hey Rob, that's my dad.

So anything you want to say to Bailey, you can.

But that's pretty cool to have a fan.

Bailey's my straight A student.

She's at Idaho State University.

And she's killing it.

Rob's there.

She's over there doing great.

And hi, Bailey.

So here's something interesting.

You're a Subaru dealer.

One thing you do not have is trucks.

And you're sitting in Napa, Idaho, which is just, it's a bedroom community,

a suburb of Boise, Idaho.

You created treasurevalleytrucks.com.

Give us a quick recap.

Why does a Subaru dealer come up with treasurevalleytrucks.com?

And what need did you see that you said, hey, we need to fill this with this website?

Well, I mean, I'm on a row of truck sellers.

So yes, you are.

You got all of them all the way down to Toyota.

And so we try to capitalize on that.

And then the campaign is really buy a used truck for half the price of a new one.

And load this lot with lots of used trucks.

And we found in this market a need for people to find trucks at a discount.

And we try to, we don't sell ones that are broken.

We're not in the deep subprime.

That's not what Subaru is.

And so it made sense for us to head into a prime buyer and try to compete at that.

You know, somewhere in that 20 to 50 grand level, because a lot of these trucks are grand 100 grand.

And yeah, we're not going to try to be there.

That's that's not that that's painful.

I think for a lot of people anyway, so that's just what we see.

So it's fascinating.

You saw the need.

You realized, hey, Subaru doesn't have a truck, but we still want to be in that space.

You've got to acquire that used inventory.

What's your best acquisition on used inventory for that truck site?

And then how many vehicles do you sell a month?

What's your best acquisition and then monthly sales?

Yeah.

So we're averaging 230 cars per month, you know, 45 to 50 of those cars.

I think it's 45 are now trucks.

The best place for us to acquire is off the street.

Everybody knows.

Okay.

If you can buy them from customers, you know, and figure out carbon and car max have figured

it out and we want to be, you know, if we got both of them in our market, we want to

at least be number three at buying these cars off the street because you don't pay auction

fees and you don't tend to pay all the money.

And then dealers are notorious for selling broken vehicles at the auction.

So, you know, that's that's a dig at any of the auctioneers.

But, you know, we're finding that if we buy them off the street, we're better off.

So what is your process to buy them off the street?

Do you do it off a website?

Do you do signs?

Do you have a call center that does outreach practically?

What's your process?

Yeah, I'll be above.

So, you know, signage on the freeway.

We're lucky we're on ID for we're right on the freeway that has lots and lots of traffic.

We banered it up.

We buy cars.

We have started an acquisition department on our website.

We also have an acquisition department internally where we're getting after anybody who's got

a truck auto trader cars.com and we're trying to buy trucks.

We will buy them from the auction, but they got to be clean because it's just, you know,

as you all know, it's selling selling broken vehicles to customers buying these cars from

auction, fixing them and then trying to make money is is tough is tough.

So we try to we try to limit what we're buying from auctions.

But we need, you know, I'm in a place where I need trucks.

And if I got to buy an auction, I just got to make sure they're clean.

How long ago did you start?

We've been at this just just about a year.

And we got signage just needs to go up and things like that.

So we're we're we're fledgling.

We're in the beginning, but we want to boom it.

And, you know, we want to have hundreds of trucks to sell because, you know, Idaho's a

truck market.

And, you know, we're we're going to drive truck traffic.

And then our neighbors are going to win too, because we're going to drive truck traffic

and we're an advertiser.

We advertise.

We are allowed.

I just think it's a fascinating approach.

You'll easily think about this to say, hey, look, we're a Subaru retailer.

We're going to own the Subaru space, the cars, crossovers, all that.

And then, hey, we're in a market where trucks are popular.

Idaho, they absolutely are lived there for a decade.

I saw the competition around that truck space.

So you're like, hey, we can do that too.

So we're going to put up a website.

We're going to acquire a ton of trucks.

You say you're selling what would you say about 250 units a month.

You threw down the gauntlet with your team.

You said we're not satisfied with 250.

We're not satisfied with 400.

Not 600.

You want 700.

When you put that number up on the wall to your team, how do you, you know,

what's your timeline to achieving it?

And how are you pointing your team in that direction so that it's an inspiring goal?

But when you're less than half of it today, it's not discouraging.

How do you keep everybody engaged, Rob?

Yeah, I mean, the goal would be 100 additional per year.

And so for, we'd like to average 300 this year, 400 the following year,

500, 600, 700.

And we're going to grow, you know, as we do those, as we do that,

because we're going to need enough vehicles on the lot to then do that.

That's a big jump.

I think the crew generally likes to have some vision that's a big,

hairy, audacious goal.

I think they like it.

I agree.

I like that we talk vision, that we talk about our future,

and that you're going with us.

I learned that years ago from, I'm sure guys that you knew, Sam,

that would come up and they would just set people up to know where this thing is.

This is a big ship.

And we're, but the nice thing is we're part of 16 stores,

but we're allowed to turn quick.

And so we're going to make quick pivots and hop on because we're all going there.

And the ones who will, I think it's good for them.

The ones who will, there's plenty of other places to work.

But also your timeline and expectation, I mean, ties it all together.

If you said 700 by the end of the year, you'd probably have everyone check out,

but to stack on an extra 100 a month, I mean, in a five-year term, that's reasonable.

And you'll probably hit it before that, you know,

because as you increase that volume in every department,

you're going to just start attracting even more and more in your new and used cards in the sectors.

Yeah, we hope so.

Like I said, we're advertisers, so getting out.

And I think it's, I mentioned also that, you know, we're really,

we're really trying to grow a staff and really care for customers.

If you do that and get, you get known for it, you'll,

that'll certainly help you tremendously.

So let's talk that for a little bit.

So again, my Zurich career, I was there in the Treasure Valley for a decade.

Treasure Valley refers to Boise in the surrounding community.

You've got some truly elite operators, the Peterson family, Mark and his folks.

The Ed Marks, they transitioned from the largest GM of dealership, dealer group in the state

to focused on Toyota next door, Grant Peterson, who recently sold, I think, to the Kendall Group.

And then you've got some really big national-sized powerhouses.

You've got groups in that area that have leaned all into developing people

and to really investing in their people.

In 2026, January of, what are one or two things that you're doing to really create an elite team

and elite culture that can develop, that can deliver on that 700-unit goal, Rob?

Oh, I would say the first thing is, and we stole this from Idaho Central Credit Union,

who you know well, they just loaded in the state of Idaho,

and now they're expanding into Washington and they're heading over Seattle

and they're heading south and they're into Arizona.

And I wouldn't be surprised if it's Utah next and if they can get into Oregon and figure that out.

So they came in one day and they had shoes on their sleeves

and the shoes, they look like Chuck Taylor's.

And the shoes came from a guy by the name of Lonnie Mayne called Red Shoes Living.

And it stands out.

The point that Dan Jorgensen made about from ICCU was that Lonnie has five principles of red shoes living.

The awareness, gratitude, everyone has a story of respect and put yourself out there.

So we put it on the wall upstairs and we focus on kind of a,

that's our central who we are.

We don't allow terrorists, we don't allow pirates, we don't allow people that don't do it our way.

And so that's where it starts selling the positive, being positive single day.

That's Red Shoes Living.

We give an award, there's red shoes up on the wall.

We give an award every month to the most positive person in our dealership

and they get red Chuck Taylor's.

Okay, that's cool.

What was cool is the Kiefer Auto Group, John Kiefer and Corinne Kiefer in Eugene, Oregon.

They also picked it up for their office and the other 15 stores and they're trying to get it, you know, everywhere.

And they give out the award and they're selling to their office and to their people that are at the mothership.

You need to send us over a picture of those.

We'll share that with our CDG audience as part of the fall.

We put stuff in the newsletter, it'd be fun to see that.

I know another thing that you're focused on as we wrap up here today.

Actually, I have two questions for you.

Number one, you're sharing with your team the book Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

What's the biggest dysfunction you see in automotive today that's fixed by having a deliberate focus on that book and on creating a team that is free of dysfunctions?

What's dysfunction number one?

Yeah, I would say that one of the things that I'm pretty good at personally is openness.

And I want people's opinions.

I'm definitely more of an Obama model guy than a dictatorship.

I want everybody, I'm in charge.

I'm going to tell you what to do, but I love that others can feel like they're a part of this and that they're open to.

So to answer your question directly, it's fear of conflict.

That's one of the five dysfunctions.

Okay, yeah, you got to hit it.

Hit it right out the front gate, right?

Yeah, so willingness to have some conflict and have people that are beneath you that are subordinates of the boss.

Let them have their voice and let them say what's really on their mind and not be afraid of getting fired or, oh, I know better than you do.

And I just disagree with it.

I don't know better.

And you're on the front line.

You see these things.

Let's collaborate.

Let's be collaborative and let's talk it through so we can solve these problems.

I would say that's the number one.

So the five dysfunctions, anybody who reads it and I highly recommend it.

Absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results.

But I'd say the conflict one is probably you need to be open to it and you need to disagree and disagree vehemently and then do with a lot of love so that nobody leaves upset.

And sometimes they will, of course, but I would say get after those disagreements.

Well, I love it.

You've got to focus on not only the Subaru brand expanding it expanding into the truck segment, 700 units and having a team to deliver on it.

That's elite and extraordinary.

Just a couple last questions before you wrap producers will start pushing me to do it.

Number one, you heard the conversation in the first interview about AI search and getting to show up obviously as a Subaru retailer in your marketplace, a very competitive one, you're focused on lead generation.

What's your best lead source in Idaho?

January 2026, something we asked quite a few of our dealers.

What's your best digital lead source today?

My website.

Very good.

Your own website.

But I'm different than a lot.

You know, and I don't want to, in the sense that we do a lot of television, we do a lot of radio and every TV and every radio ad.

We mentioned put it back to it.

And yeah, we're trying to get conversions.

And so by far our website is the place where we get the most number of conversions and clearly the best conversions.

We're converting at the highest percentage from our website.

Are you a Boise State Bronco?

Are you a big fan of the BSU?

All right.

Guess where Boise State's playing this year, Rob?

Where?

Western Michigan.

I don't know what week it is.

Western Michigan University.

Boise State, as I heard it from former quarterback Zach Terrell, one of our GMs here at Ziggler, they're coming to Kalamazoo.

So you need to load up a plane, buy your commercial ticket.

Come on out and we'll host you here in Kalamazoo for that particular game.

I went to Notre Dame last year when Boise State played and then was able to go and watch Genti play in Indianapolis for the Raiders.

So I'm a fan.

I graduated in 95, so this is really all we got.

Don't Broncos.

Boise State travels well.

I'm going to assume you're a Seahawks fan as well.

So you've got a dog in the races that's coming up.

Well, we got two.

I mean, this community tends to be Denver Bronco 49 Seahawks fans because there's no other.

Yeah.

Well, Rob Studebaker, General Manager, Treasure Valley, Subaru.

Thanks for being on the show, sharing your perspectives and the growth that you're experiencing as a Subaru retailer in Napa or Boise, Idaho, Rob.

Thanks for being on.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Rob.

Now, Yuli, I know I've asked you sports before, but you're like, hey, I'm focused on retail.

Boise State, have you ever seen a Boise State game?

It's on Smurf turf.

It's Blue turf.

My son, Nate, loves Boise State.

Like it's one of the coolest teams.

In fact, he wanted to go to school there for a hot minute, but you've not seen football until you've seen Boise State.

That's one of the many things I love about you, Sam, that you remember that I was way out of my element while you guys were having that conversation.

I'm like, please move me in.

You're like, pass, pass.

I'm out.

Well, hey to our entire daily.

And by the way, Yoga Cars will pass your advice along to Rob as it relates to that.

I can't tell you how much we appreciate our audience that watches every single episode that puts their comments into the comments.

It truly enriches the conversation and huge props out to Rob's daughter, Bailey, studying at ISU.

That's really nice.

Idaho State University to our entire listening audience.

Thank you for watching Daily Deal Live 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, one PM Easter, which means we'll be back Monday with more content.

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.

Thanks for being here, everybody.

Thanks, guys.

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