Presented by:
Hey everyone,
Welcome to the second edition of our monthly Dealer Temp Check.
Over time, this will become one of the clearest month-over-month and year-over-year indicators of how dealers in CDG Circles see the market and their own businesses evolving.
This month, operators representing 235 dealerships participated. Let's dive in.
— CDG
First time reading a CDG Newsletter?
Welcome to the Market Pulse—your cheatsheet to auto retail, built to help dealers price right, stock smart, and stay ahead.
New vehicle sales are still idling in place: 37% of dealers report new sales slightly declining, versus just 31% seeing slight improvement.
Used sales are holding as the bright spot: 54% of dealers report used sales improving (14% strongly, 40% slightly), with a net sentiment of +30.
And F&I/fixed ops are doing the heavy lifting: Back-end gross posted a net sentiment of +56 and fixed ops +49, both essentially unchanged from last check-in.
(Source: CDG’s June Temp Check / Dealer Pulse)
New-vehicle sales are holding up as nice-to-haves amid ongoing fluctuations in consumer demand and lead volume.
What this edition told us, halfway through 2026, is basically what dealers have been telling us for a while now.
New vehicle sales are stuck in neutral (37% say slightly declining, the top answer).
Sourced via CDG’s June Temp Check
Consumer demand is mixed (49%, the largest group).
And leads are down by 52% (combining "down slightly" and "down significantly").
This can be explained pretty easily, given that affordability and interest rates topped the list of concerns again this month, with about 60% of respondents citing them.
NOTE TO DEALERS:
If leads are down 52%, you shouldn’t wait on volume to fix your close rate.
Instead: Audit your last 20-ish lost deals and tag the actual reason lost (and don’t say price). Find one like slow follow-up, no trade-in flexibility, financing friction, or something else, and then make a plan for fixing.
F&I and fixed ops are still the ones holding the floor up.
Knowing new sales are stuck, demand is mixed, and leads are down, the obvious question is what's absorbing the hit.
Same answer as in May:
Back-end gross (F&I) is expanding, with a net sentiment of +56, the strongest reading of anything we track.
Fixed ops isn't far behind at +49, with more than half of dealers (52%) reporting service and parts up 5-20%.
And used-vehicle sales are holding at +30 net sentiment.
Sourced via CDG’s June Temp Check
WHY IT MATTERS:
At +56, F&I is the strongest reading of anything we tracked in June. If that's not matching what you're seeing at your store, revisiting your menu presentation is probably the highest-leverage 30 minutes you can spend this week.
A quick word from our partner
Think fraud only happens once in a while? Think again.
Nine in ten dealers express concern about fraud, including costly issues such as fake income documents, synthetic identities, and trade-in scams.
That’s why more dealers are turning to Experian Automotive.
With faster, smarter identity, income, and trade-in ownership verification tools, you can help catch fraud without slowing down deals.
Protect your profits, streamline the deal, and stay one step ahead with Fraud Protect.
Given this week's edition, I wanted to bring in a few voices who took the survey themselves.
Here are their Dos and Don’ts:
Do: Get uncomfortable with the stuff you've been doing “forever."
Vinnie Pontious, COO at Dahl Automotive (16 stores), said the group made two big changes this year. One was moving off their CRM provider after 17 years (from vAuto to Vincue), and the other was shifting ad spend from their agency to Team Velocity.
"I just feel like people haven't adjusted from the COVID years. They're in this comfort zone. Our motto's been get uncomfortable and become comfortable again with a new way of doing business, which is really the way we used to do business in '16, '17, '18, and 2019."
Vinnie Pontious
One of their stores almost immediately saw a meaningful uptick in traffic and units sold in the 65-75 days after the switch.
Do: Show up in your community, not just your CRM.
For rural stores especially, Marcy Mahon, Dealer Partner at Mahon Ford, said the highest-leverage move is local visibility via community events, chamber meetings, and partnerships with local charities, shared on social media in a way that's genuinely social rather than promotional.
"People want to put things on social media that are the opposite of social, and I always find that to be a mistake. It's not somebody sitting with... 'Oh, just bought a new car.' It's more like, ‘Hey, we're at this community event, great time, here's our dog hanging out with us, we just love being out and meeting the people."
Marcy and Rich Mahon (Both operators of Mahon Ford)
Do: Take the deal, and let service and repeat business make up the rest.
Kellen Flynn, Chief Strategic Officer at Viva-Fiesta Auto Group, said the mistake he sees other dealers still making is holding out for gross instead of closing.
"It's not taking the deal. It's trying to hold on for gross or whatever it is. We're taking the deal no matter what at this point. We know it's gonna be a lifetime customer, hopefully, and we're gonna get them in the door otherwise as well—service, and other cars down the line."
Kellen Flynn
Do: Put AI in the room for calls and F&I.
Flynn told us AI coaching has been the single biggest change to his operation over the past year, using Car Wars for phone calls (switched about a year and a half ago) and SIRO for F&I.
"We've gotten pretty into AI coaching. We use it for phone calls, and we've even used it in the finance office. We can go back and review stuff now, which we couldn't do before. We can give suggestions, give highlights—they get scores immediately,” he said.
Don’t: Price to market (PTM) when you could be pricing ahead of it.
Pontious said the fastest way to unstick a flat store is to stop guessing on used inventory and start pricing off the data, even when it's uncomfortable.
"You price cars at PTM plus instead of [just] PTM. That was a huge, uncomfortable mindset shift for our team. The more used cars I can turn, the better my business in general is gonna be."
Comfort is the enemy right now.
And the dealers pulling ahead (as seen above) are the ones willing to blow up a 17-year vendor relationship or reprice their entire used-inventory strategy if it means doing things even slightly better than before.
