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Welcome to the Market Pulse—your guide to auto retail, built to help dealers price right, stock smart, and stay ahead.
Toyota and Lexus are topping the desirability list: Toyota leads Presidio's dealer desirability ranking, with its luxury brand, Lexus, not too far behind.
Chevrolet, GMC, and Nissan are climbing the list, too: Chevrolet and GMC both got multiple increases despite modest sales volume, while Nissan jumped five spots.
Audi is sliding on both fronts: It dropped in dealer desirability rankings and is the only luxury brand to see its valuation multiple cut this quarter.
(Source: Presidio Q2 2026 Dealership M&A Report)
Note: *Desirability scores come from Presidio's Midyear 2026 Dealer Direction Survey, where dealers rank brands on how desirable they'd be to own. This is separate from the blue-sky multiple, which is Presidio's own valuation metric based on earnings.
Franchise desirability rankings are shuffling as dealers rethink which brands are worth owning.
Toyota leads with a 9.28 desirability score (duh), followed by Lexus at 8.65, meaning dealers want in on both brands more than any others tracked.
Honda (8.05) and Subaru (7.52) also landed in the top few spots.
Source: Presidio Group
Also on the chart, you’ll see that Kia climbed a spot to 6.95, and Chevrolet jumped two spots to 6.71.
Nissan isn’t pictured above because it’s still lower on the list at 3.72, but to its credit, it’s up a solid five spots from the last reading.
Porsche, on the other hand, dropped three spots to 6.33, while Audi fell three spots to 4.28.
(These are just the top 10 spots. Rounding out the rest of the list are Hyundai, Buick-GMC, Mazda, Cadillac, Genesis, JLR, Audi, Acura, Nissan, Ultraluxury, CDJR, Volkswagen, Lincoln, Volvo, and Infiniti, in that order.)
NOTE TO DEALERS:
Kyle Coleman, President & CEO of Coleman Automotive Group, bought his first Nissan store before its recent five-spot ranking jump:
"I feel like I knew something 12 months ago."
Point being: Rankings can confirm a hunch or flag a risk, but the buy decision still comes down to which side of the fence you're comfortable on: high risk, high reward, or slow and steady with a proven brand.
Either way, you need full confidence in the bet.
Presidio's valuation data backs up the aforementioned desirability trends.
Dealer sentiment is one thing, but Presidio's own multiple moves this quarter confirm the same pattern in most cases.
Lexus got the largest increase of any brand, up a full point to a 10x–11x range, and Toyota moved up half a point to 8x–9.5x.
Both also lead the pack on volume, meaning new vehicles sold per dealership over the course of a full year, with Toyota averaging 1,736 new-vehicle sales per store in 2025 and Lexus at 1,518.
In this case, desirability, valuation, and volume all point the same direction.
Chevrolet and GMC also picked up valuation increases, Chevrolet by a quarter point and GMC by half a point.
Honda, Kia, and Subaru move solid volume (1,211, 1,069, and 1,003 units per store) but saw no valuation movement.
Audi is the one brand where sentiment and valuation moved down together.
Porsche’s multiple was cut back in January, and while it held steady this quarter, Presidio still flags margin pressure and tariff-driven price hikes as reasons to keep watching the brand closely.
WHY IT MATTERS:
Strong sales aren’t automatically earning a brand a higher multiple right now. Instead, buyers are pricing in something else, whether that's trust, simplicity, or how sustainable those sales actually are.
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We covered a lot above on which brands dealers want to own and why, so here are a few scale-related dos and don’ts, sourced from CDG News interviews and CDG Podcast episodes.
Do: Weigh people, profit, and potential above everything when you're actually pricing a deal.
Scott Falcone, of World Auto Group, offered a framework for what a store is really worth to a buyer.
"Three P's tell you what a store is worth to you... People, Profit, Potential. You pay full freight for Profit, you pay to keep People, and you pay the least for Potential, because Potential is just a measurement of how badly the last owner underperformed.”
Scott Falcone
He did also add: “The brand isn't inconsequential, but not as important as these three items."
Do: Buy into a brand's incentive structure, not just its badge.
Coleman said one of the reasons his Nissan bet paid off was how easy the manufacturer made it to actually hit targets.
"There's no math that at the end of the month you, where have this equation of… all these things that you have to figure out whether you hit it or not... you either sell X amount of cars or you don't. Every single month we're 140%, 150% of our objective and they're realistic objectives."
Kyle Coleman
"That's the other side of things, is most other manufacturers... they change the target... you hit it, then the bar goes up."
Do: Read the rankings as a signal to OEMs, not just a scoreboard for dealers.
Kenneth Criscione, with Harte Auto Group, said the rankings are really a report card for manufacturers first, and that any brand sitting near the bottom should be the one asking hard questions about its own product, not the dealers selling it.
"This is the strongest indicator you have because if a dealer wants the brand, it's because it's a strong brand with good customer retention and good margin. If you are a manufacturer not on here, how do you not ask yourself what is wrong? Start with the product, then go down the line.”
Kenneth Criscione
Don’t: Assume deep discounting builds brand desirability.
Criscione actually used Nissan as the example here, arguing that leaning on incentives instead of product is why the brand doesn’t sit higher on the list right now.
“There is also a psychology to this too. The fast and deep discounts (Nissan) [don’t] build a brand… Nissan keeps saying that they’re gonna turn the corner. I hope they do. They gotta stop building deals and build cars that people want.”
I love a brand comparison chart as much as the next, but I also love what Falcone shared with us.
If those three factors (People, Profit, and Potential) aren’t aligned, the brand’s broader desirability doesn’t really matter.
Here’s why: A falling rank or a smaller multiple doesn't automatically make a store a bad buy, just like a rising one doesn't automatically make it a good one.
