Presented by:
Welcome to the Market Pulse—your cheatsheet to auto retail, built to help dealers price right, stock smart, and stay ahead.
New-vehicle day supply is sitting at 62 days nationally, down from 75 days last month: The industry is back within the 60–80-day range typically considered balanced, but individual brand numbers tell a more divided story.
Toyota and Lexus are each carrying under 30 days of new-vehicle inventory: Toyota at ~24 days, Lexus at ~28, translating directly into pricing stability, lower floorplan costs, and minimal reliance on factory incentives.
Volvo, meanwhile, is carrying ~93 days of new-vehicle supply while Q1 U.S. sales are down 32% vs. last year: Every model in the lineup is declining, leaving dealers managing aging inventory and unpredictable incentive support.
(Day supply figures in this edition are drawn from a custom CDG analysis using data from Cox Automotive, Edmunds, and MarkLines)
Toyota and Lexus are carrying less than half the industry's new-vehicle day supply.
As of early April 2026, we found that the industry is carrying about 62 days of new vehicle supply nationally. Toyota is at about 24 days. Lexus is at roughly 28.
Honda is running similarly lean.
The advantages there: Fewer units on the lot means lower floorplan carrying costs, less dependence on factory incentives, and enough pricing stability to hold at or near MSRP on in-demand models like the RAV4, Tacoma, and GX.
In other words, dealers in these brands have had room to focus on what matters long-term, aka service retention, CPO, and allocation management.
The downside: Low supply communicated poorly is one of the fastest ways to frustrate a shopper. A customer who finds out a model is unavailable or weeks away, without a clear path forward, isn’t always willing to wait. And in most cases, they take the next option somewhere else.
NOTE TO DEALERS:
I recently spoke with Fred Emich of Emich Automotive in Denver, who manages these dynamics across his Chevy, Kia, and VW stores.
Here’s what his team does:
Put "sale pending" banners on VDPs and incoming-inventory thumbnails on vehicles without photos yet. Scarcity should be visible on the website before a customer calls in wondering where everything went.
And when his VW store had a wave of incoming units before the tax credit deadline (cars that weren't invoiced yet), his team ran banners showing how many were inbound.
"Once you have limited inventory or if most everything has a sale pending on it, it drives a lot of urgency," he said. "Customers usually understand that."
Volvo is carrying 93 days of new vehicle inventory, and VW is running over 140 days.
On the other side of the supply divide, Volvo entered April 2026 with approximately 93 days of supply, with Q1 U.S. sales falling 32% vs. last year, and every model in the lineup declining.
The cons: When slower sales and high stock run together for long enough, the effects cause tighter new-car margins as discounts are used to move aging units, used-car values on trade-ins drift down as more stale new inventory floods the wholesale market, and factory support becomes harder to predict month to month.
Brands like Volkswagen, carrying 100+ days of supply during some periods, operate under similar constraints.
WHY IT MATTERS:
In both cases, and with any brand carrying bloated inventory levels, profitability is harder to forecast, putting pressure on the sales team to move cars at whatever gross they can get.
A quick word from our partner
“Mostly accurate” isn’t a real number.
Behind every financial statement is a system juggling inconsistent data, manual processes, and too many points of failure.
The result? Numbers that look right, but aren’t fully reliable.
We unpack this with Jen Speerbrecher in a recent CDG podcast:
"DMS is Not the Truth!” The Unspoken Dealer Accounting Secret Costing Thousands (+ How to Fix it)
When I spoke with Emich, partner and GM with Emich Automotive in Denver (a multi-brand group running Chevrolet, Kia, and Volkswagen stores), we also discussed what inventory discipline actually looks like when you're managing three brands with three different supply realities at the same time.
Here are his Dos and Don'ts from the floor:
Do: Keep a demo of your fastest-moving model on the lot, even when you could sell it.
"Don't sell through a hot car. Always have one of those around to show and test drive, even if you make it a demo."
Fred Emich
Emich has actually applied this at his Kia store with the Telluride by keeping one on the floor even as demand outpaces supply, so they can still offer test drives and have a visual reference for shoppers.
Do: Require nonrefundable deposits, but give customers a clear delivery window.
"[People] gave refundable deposits at six different dealerships, and whoever [had] the first one, they'd just cancel the rest. That's the kind of behavior we were working to not have."
To avoid this, his store takes $500 nonrefundable deposits and sets a tentative delivery date on a case-by-case basis, which creates flexibility for the customer while also giving confidence that, once the vehicle arrives, there’s a deal to be made. The deposit is later deducted from the agreed-upon sale price.
Do: Use AI to cross-reference your DMS sales data and inventory data, then order against what you find.
"I'm taking spreadsheets and using Claude to basically merge them and identify patterns—how quickly the cars turned, what the gross profit was—and I can find holes in the inventory that I can fill at my store."
He then runs this against state and regional market data to identify where his mix has gaps relative to actual local demand. He says that output directly informs what he orders, down to trim level and color combinations.
Don’t: Treat your new car order like a task you hand off.
In running three brands with very different floor plan support and supply behavior, Emich closed our conversation by stressing that being deliberate about all of it, starting with who signs off on the order, is what safeguards performance in markets like today.
"I really look at [inventory management] as the single largest investment I have at the dealership. That's why I'm personally involved in ordering new cars and not just allowing some new car manager to complete a task."
On VW specifically: "We certainly turned down a bunch of inventory to make sure we were pretty balanced."
Don’t: Ignore the floor plan math and how it varies by brand when deciding how much inventory to take.
"[Kia is] producing a lot of cars, very aggressive, trying to set a record every month. They have probably the lowest levels of floor plan assistance. So, taking those cars, you've got to make sure you really turn those from a profitability level."
The good news: He says the tactics outlined above help to create balance in what they’re stocking and why, regardless of the brand or financing costs.
What Emich is doing at his stores…turning down inventory where necessary, treating the lot like the investment it is, keeping comms open with the shopper…is the same instinct Toyota has been running at the production level for years.
With tariffs reshaping pricing overnight and demand shifting on a dime, that should be the baseline.
But you don't have to be Toyota to think like Toyota.
You just have to be willing to explore what tactics (Claude, inventory deposits, model demos, etc.) will get you to the point of thinking and executing at the same level.
The latest updates to the CDG Buy/Sell Tracker.
