Hybrids Up 34%, Credit at a 10-Year High: Your 2026 Used Car Sourcing Playbook

But I guess, John, that's a little bit of news and events.

But what else do you have for us, brother, in terms of news and events?

Well, there's a lot there.

But I think, you know, a couple things that jumped out to me was – some interesting discussion about the wholesale side of things.

And, you know, when you start digging into it and looking at it, wholesale used inventory forecast for 2026, just shy of 12 million, 11.9 million.

And then for projected for 2027, for the first time since 2019, 12 million.

And so when you think about it during the pandemic, it hit a floor of 8.4 million.

Uh, you know, now we're, now we're looking at 12 million from a whole wholesale inventory projected for 2027.

And, and what really jumped out to me, uh, when I started looking at some of this is, um, they, they talk about the consumer sentiment, um, is still a little bit low, but wholesale remains strong.

And so I think the message here to consider is if you're still relying on the auction, and no offense towards auctions, again, let me drop a virtual asterisk in here.

I'm not hammering auctions.

I'm just saying from a dealer perspective, if you're still relying heavily on your sourcing being solely auctions, It's going to create a struggle for you from a margin standpoint because the auctions are staying consistently strong.

And you can see there the amount of inventory.

And their point is you would think with that amount of inventory coming back in, there would be some relief.

But there hasn't been any relief yet.

And as a result of that, auction prices are staying high and with the consumer sentiment still somewhat stagnant.

Um, if you're, if you're, if you're relying on auctions as your, as your primary source, then expect to get, uh, restricted, uh, shrinking and challenging margins out of that.

So, um, you know, that was one of the things that stood out to me in the news.

And again, I say that the reason why it stood out is guys, we've been, you know, With our leadership, our CEO, Jason Rice, right, it's something he's been talking about for quite some time now.

We're seeing it in the trending in our individual dealers.

And we've been talking about it for a while now from a perspective of trying to help dealers be proactive in how they're looking at this, right, because from a margin standpoint.

Right.

So, and then, you know, that bleeds into what we've been talking about on, on our show here for several weeks.

And that is the uptick in EVs that are not only showing up in the market, but that dealers are having success with.

So, you know, that was something we talked about a little bit prior to getting on, on our, our starting this, this podcast is, you know, if I'm a dealer that, cause we taught again last year, if you remember correctly, there was a lot of talk about EVs and they were going to be dominant last year and it didn't happen.