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When a Texas dealership group and a Stellantis store resolved a class action suit alleging underpayment of wages and overtime to detailers, porters, valets, shuttle drivers and car washers employed by a now-defunct company, the settlement reflected a legal and financial dilemma confronting dealerships that rely on outside contractors for fixed ops services.

And when a Texas vendor that supplies detailer, valet and car wash services agreed to pay $166,435 to close a U.S. Labor Department employee misclassification complaint, that settlement averted potential claims against the vendor's dealership clients.In the first case, a settlement reached earlier this year by Sonic Automotive Inc., several of its Texas dealerships and Gulfgate Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram in Houston meant a judge didn't need to decide a thorny question: Was Rascoa LLC, an independent contractor that had hired the workers, solely responsible for personnel management and compensation, as the …

A majority of service customers know their adviser and/or technician by name, according to a DealerRater survey conducted for Fixed Ops Journal in September.

Customers were asked whether they knew the names of the service department staff the last time they brought their vehicle in for repair or maintenance. More than half of respondents spread across both luxury and mass- market brands responded they did know the name of either their adviser or technician before showing up for their service appointment. A little more than 40 percent replied they didn't know their adviser or technician beforehand.

Fixed ops trainers and consultants say the goal for advisers is to provide such good service that customers ask for them by name each visit. Likewise, technicians should look to make a connection with their video multi-point inspections so customers will request them by name.

Q: The last time you brought your vehicle into the dealership for s…

There's little doubt the Inflation Reduction Act will have a seismic effect on the U.S. electric vehicle industry, but the dust hasn't yet settled on the details that will determine the affordability of different makes and models now on the market.

Major players are already requesting tweaks and adjustments to the act. If enacted as written, the new law could have the unintended consequence of actually suppressing sales of North American EV manufacturers, because few, if any, can meet all aspects of the supply chain criteria in the language.

If this and other issues are addressed, however, a couple of basic trajectories will have been set that carry long-term implications on supply and demand.

First and perhaps most obvious is the clear effort by the act to support domestic EV manufacturing. Vehicles made outside North America do not qualify for new federal tax incentives.The second is the effort to democratize demand. To attract Main Stre…

The National Automobile Dealers Association's guidelines on the changing auto retail industry can help state associations, leaders say, but the national guidelines will need to keep changing, too.

Some state dealer association leaders were consulted as NADA drafted a set of guiding principles that advocate for the franchise model. It lays out NADA's position on such things as vehicle reservation programs and selling vehicles directly without franchised dealers.

The guidelines are useful, but they, too, will need the flexibility to continue to change along with the industry, said Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association.

"One thing that NADA has made clear is that these are designed to evolve, so if things change, then we can change the principle to reflect that change," said Maas, who offered input to NADA during the drafting process. "The idea is these are living documents."

NADA's framework outlines the association's…

Ayman Moussa is doing more with less.

The co-owner of Carnamic in Hayward, Calif., leverages technology and a lean organizational structure to operate his eight Bay Area stores with about half the employees of a typical dealership.

The group, which has Nissan, Infiniti, Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Kia stores, sold 4,286 new and used vehicles last year.

Carnamic stores have six salespeople vs. the 12 found on a typical sales floor, said Moussa, who launched the company with his brother Chadi more than a decade ago.

The salespeople are product specialists tasked with walking potential customers through the vehicle, answering questions and conducting test drives. The product specialists are not involved with making the sale.

That's the responsibility of the store's two sales managers, who also handle arranging financing and selling aftermarket products.

"Our sales managers control the entire sales…

It doesn't take advanced knowledge of Newtonian physics to understand the forces at play right now in the U.S. auto market.

But it helps.

Consider Newton's Third Law of Motion. "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

That played out in September — and indeed throughout the third quarter — across the U.S. auto industry as automakers and dealers struggled to find a balance between opposing forces. Continuing production and logistical bottlenecks at some automakers kept inventory from recovering more quickly; rapidly rising interest rates and prices squared off against consumers' concerns about their ability to pay.

The result: The seasonally adjusted, annualized rate came in at 13.67 million last month, Motor Intelligence said, above analysts' projections and much improved from the 12.38 million in September 2021, the lowest pace of sales since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. September 2021…

DUBLIN, Va. —Freightliner has led its U.S. diesel big rig rivals for years, commanding a market share no competitor could catch. But the nascent transformation to electric trucking provides other players an opening, and Volvo has jumped ahead.

Sales of electric trucks are still almost immeasurable compared to the roughly 150,000 heavy-duty diesel trucks manufacturers are on track to sell in the U.S. this year.

Yet Volvo holds an early lead in the U.S., according to registration data collected by S&P Global Mobility. Fleets have purchased 51 Volvo VNR Electric regional haul trucks through July. Peterbilt is at 10. Volvo's sibling company, Mack, is at seven, and Navistar's International Truck is at six. The data doesn't include 40 prototype battery electric Freightliner eCascadias and eM2s from Daimler Trucks North America in various test programs.

Volvo's lead is slight — now up to about 60 registrations, the company said — but…

Audi’s 5.2-liter V-10-powered R8 supercar, which debuted in 2006, is bowing out with the R8 GT, with a production run capped at just 333 globally.

The model has rear-wheel drive, 602 hp and 413 pound-feet of torque. The transmission is a seven-speed dual-clutch, though the GT gets an altered gear ratio that allows for a higher top speed: 199 mph. It vrooms from 0-62 mph in 3.4 seconds.

Audi also equips the R8 with an adjustable traction control system. In the GT, drivers can choose from seven levels, each allowing different amounts of slippage. 

Electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive Inc. will recall about 13,000 vehicles it delivered to customers after discovering a minor structural defect.

Irvine, California-based Rivian will recall the vehicles because a fastener “may not have been sufficiently torqued,” CEO RJ Scaringe said in a letter to customers that was seen by Bloomberg News.

The electric truck and SUV maker said it discovered a fastener connecting the upper control arm and steering knuckle may have been improperly installed. In rare cases, the problem could lead to a loss of steering control, the company said.

The company is recalling about 13,000 vehicles -- nearly all of vehicles delivered to customers -- even though the issue was discovered only in seven, “out of an abundance of caution.” The company said it isn’t aware of any injuries resulting from the issue. The cost of the recall isn’t material, according to a person familiar with matter.

The recall is a setback to Rivi…

Used-vehicle retailer Carvana, facing another setback, had its license suspended by Michigan on Friday for repeated violations covering titles, registrations and odometers.

Michigan's Department of State on Friday said that the license for Carvana had been summarily suspended for several alleged violations of the Michigan Vehicle Code. The violations were discovered during an investigation of multiple no-title complaints from consumers, the state said.

The state said the violations by Carvana include:

Failing to make application for title and registration within 15 days of delivery for 112 customers since agreeing to an earlier probation extension Committing fraudulent acts in connection with selling or otherwise dealing in vehicles where Carvana employees admitted to destroying title applications and all applicable documents pertaining to the sale of three vehicles that were sold to customers and Carvana took the vehicles back Failing to maintain odometer…

When Chris Thomas worked as an intern at Ford Motor Co. in the depths of the Great Recession, he finagled his way into a meeting with Bill Ford Jr. and asked the company chairman to put him on the most interesting project possible.

Thomas spent his summer analyzing transportation trends in cities with more than 10 million residents. He quickly parlayed that research into a role crafting business plans for potential transportation startups, long before "mobility" became an industry buzzword.

Today, Thomas, who is based in Detroit, is a partner at Assembly Ventures, the venture capital firm focused on global transportation investments that he co-founded in 2020. He was a guest on the Oct. 2 episode of "Shift: A Podcast About Mobility" with Staff Reporter Pete Bigelow. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation.

Q: The Detroit auto show was underwhelming. How can the organizers recapture the magic? Could it be combined with the B…

The key to delivering a seamless and transparent sales experience to vehicle buyers is to figure out how to reduce the clunkiness that often interrupts the process.

One way to get there: By cutting down on the number of logins, windows and toggling back and forth that dealership sales employees have to navigate while working on a car deal.

It's one of the biggest pain points for dealership employees, and it is passed on to dealership customers in the form of extra time and potentially less transparency, which could lead to less trust, dealership leaders and industry experts said last month at an industry conference hosted by dealership software giant CDK Global Inc. in Detroit.

"In our stores, we have so many different logins to so many different programs," Sam D'Arc, COO of Zeigler Auto Group, which has dealerships in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, said during a panel discussion. "That's a friction point in delivering t…