The Auto Market Brief

What happens when consumer spending slows, purchasing power comes under pressure, and automakers adjust their strategies to match a changing market?

In this episode of The Auto Market Brief, Erin Keating and Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jeremy Robb break down the latest economic data, including consumer spending, wage growth, inflation, interest rates, and vehicle sales. While some indicators suggest consumers are becoming more cautious, the broader automotive market continues to show resilience amid changing economic conditions.

Consumer spending is showing signs of slowing
Recent spending data has softened, with retail sales coming in below expectations and consumer spending growth turning negative year over year, raising new questions about the strength of consumer demand.

Purchasing power remains under pressure
Wage growth has remained below inflation for four consecutive months, reducing purchasing power and creating additional challenges for consumers already facing elevated borrowing costs and affordability concerns.

Automakers rethink product, production, and growth strategies
Automakers continue to adjust their product, manufacturing, and sourcing strategies as tariffs, trade policy discussions, and supply chain considerations play an increasingly important role in long-term planning.

The conversation also covers inventory trends, used-vehicle values, trade policy developments, manufacturing decisions, and how brands are rethinking growth opportunities in an increasingly dynamic market.

The Auto Market Brief delivers timely data, clear context, and practical insight to help industry leaders make smarter decisions—what's happening now, and what's coming next.

The Auto Market Brief is powered by Cox Automotive. For more industry insights and expert perspectives, visit our Insights Hub at Cox Automotive Insights.

Creators and Guests

Host
Erin Keating
Erin Keating is an Executive Analyst and Senior Director of Economic and Industry Insights at Cox Automotive. She brings 30 years of professional experience, including 14 years in the automotive industry, providing analysis on market conditions, automaker performance, and consumer demand shaping the economics of the new-vehicle market. Erin spent 10 years with Audi of America, including leading Audi Motorsport North America, informing her perspective on both commercial strategy and competitive dynamics.
Guest
Jeremy Robb
As chief economist at Cox Automotive, Jeremy Robb oversees the enterprise-level economic outlook, monthly forecasts, client advisory, media briefings and the strategic integration of data from the company’s extensive retail and wholesale platforms. Jeremy leads Cox Automotive's Economic and Industry Insights team, working directly with clients and executive leaders in sales, strategy and finance. He draws on his background helping companies consume data and insights to make better business decisions. He has been focused on finance and strategy for large corporations in the financial services and automotive industry for the past 20 years. Jeremy joined Cox Automotive in 2018 after spending 6 years at Nissan where he led functions in finance and remarketing.

What is The Auto Market Brief?

The Auto Market Brief, powered by Cox Automotive, breaks down the latest trends and forecasts shaping the automotive industry. The show is hosted by Cox Automotive Executive Analyst Erin Keating, coupling years of experience translating data and trends with the data and industry insights of the largest automotive services and technology provider.

Joined by other Cox Automotive experts and outside guests, you’ll get data-driven insights and industry outlooks from some of the industry’s leading voices.​

Erin Keating:

Welcome to The Auto Market Brief from Cox Automotive. Each episode, our experts and special guests break down the latest trends, insights, and news shaping the automotive market. We'll give you the information that truly matters so you can make smarter decisions and drive your business forward. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Auto Market Brief. I'm Erin Keating, your host and industry executive analyst here at Cox Automotive.

Erin Keating:

And I am joined by my trustee co host here, chief economist, Jeremy Robb. Jeremy, good to see you.

Jeremy Robb:

Good to see you, Erin. Happy Friday.

Erin Keating:

Happy Friday, exactly. So we're going to try to power through today. We know we went a little long last episode, so we got a couple of things to really talk through. Today, I think you're going to help us connect some latest signals. We got inflation numbers this week, jobs numbers last week, consumer spending, etcetera, Some news in the Manheim values.

Erin Keating:

And certainly, we wanna pop to the front of our conversation a big announcement by our larger enterprise here. So I'll wait for just a moment for the drama to build for that. Later in the podcast, I'm gonna go into this month's disciplined inventory picture, actually. Couple of really interesting fast moving announcements from Ford, some Volkswagen executive moves, and even a coming pickup truck, and then an interesting case study on a luxury brand license that I just want to bring up for the industry to think about. But let's just get started, Jeremy.

Erin Keating:

Big announcement this week for our company. Just

Jeremy Robb:

last night, big deal. Cox Automotive, sister company is Cox Communications. We roll up under Cox Enterprises and have all different kinds of entities. But Cox Communications, as people listening to this may or may not know, is merging with Charter Communications. And just last evening, that deal was agreed to by California, which was the last big state to hold out.

Jeremy Robb:

So that means the new entity is actually going to be called Cox Communications. But it will be kind of off the books of Cox Enterprises. So really big deal in the company's history. You know, Cox has founded newspaper business in 1898. All these media kind of companies came in about kind of the 1960s.

Jeremy Robb:

So been a really big part of our, like, you know, just who we are as a company. Absolutely. And will change monumentally going forward, and probably, you know, sometime really soon. So that'll put a lot more, you know, focus on automotive. We'll be the biggest group inside of Cox Enterprises.

Jeremy Robb:

We have Cox Farms, Cox Outdoors, you know, the recycling plastics business. Really cool. Lots of cool things Cox does that people aren't aware of. But we just wanted to highlight a little bit because it's a really monumental milestone in the history of the company.

Erin Keating:

Yep. 128 year old company now, 126 year old company. But, yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. I think January. Yep.

Erin Keating:

It really started in communications. But Cox Automotive, we are we are gonna get to have our day in the spotlight, right, as being the big engine that could

Jeremy Robb:

Be ready.

Erin Keating:

For the enterprise. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that is exciting news. Thanks for sharing that because I know everyone was sort of, especially within the company, on, tippy toes waiting to hear when that was gonna finally get approved.

Erin Keating:

So congratulations to everybody that I know has worked lot to of get that done. Onto things that might be specifically interesting for the automotive market. Some macro indicators came out this week, so let's fire away.

Jeremy Robb:

What do Yeah. You know, we do this every two weeks. So we sometimes have different things to talk about. We got a jobs number and some inflation updates to speak of. The job support that came out last week was negative, right?

Jeremy Robb:

It was there were no jobs created. We actually saw jobs were lost, like 23,000 jobs were lost, so expected to see positive jobs created. We had more negative revisions out there, actually pretty big ones. The three month rolling average of jobs created is just 20,000. Really low anemic job growth with lower immigration, people leaving the labor force, baby boomers, all of that.

Jeremy Robb:

Low labor force participation rate, things we've talked about before, not to belabor the point, but just not a lot of jobs, right? And that's like the unemployment rate remains low, went even lower. It's down to 4.1% now. But just on that front, you're trying to get a different job or trying to get a job, you don't have a job. Not super positive for

Erin Keating:

I'm people curious because we know that private employers actually did expand, but it was the government jobs, right, that brought that down to the negative 23,000.

Jeremy Robb:

Google government jobs was the biggest single component of a negative move in the month.

Erin Keating:

So is there any bright sign that like private companies are still hiring? Like does that how does

Jeremy Robb:

There's that some increase in construction, still increase in health services. Yeah. You know, the health services has been a thing, a theme for a while. Sure. But just not not a lot.

Jeremy Robb:

I'm forward. You know, still seeing things like the food services accommodation, those kind of components. By anything that tied a little bit to the World Cup, not really seeing the need to support economic activity growth there.

Erin Keating:

Right. So what about inflation? We got those numbers both

Jeremy Robb:

Inflation readings. Yeah, those came out. They were a little bit more tame, if you will, for July. You know, we got better readings in June because energy prices had fallen. Energy prices rose a little bit more in July.

Jeremy Robb:

Overall, CPI was only up 0.1% in the month. And now on a year over year basis, it's up 3.4%. Some of the things we'd like relative to cars, when you see prices of and those kinds of things, those are looking like moderate overall. But I think the real thing with inflation, we saw the consumer price inflation index come in a little bit better than expected. Producer prices cooled a little bit more than expected in July.

Jeremy Robb:

Those are still up 4.7% year over year. It doesn't take a genius to do the math between a four rate or a 3.4 consumer rate and a target of a 2% rate for the Fed. Just yesterday, the government sold thirty year bonds at the highest interest rate in over twenty years. So still a lot of inflation worries out there. And now worries about how much overall debt the government has issued.

Jeremy Robb:

And just the interest cost on that. So that all is really paying into this theme. And the other thing I wanted to talk about, and I don't want to get too negative, but I do want to tell everybody, right, there's some things happening that we really need to pay attention to. The first one is that we look at weekly consumer spending measures. You know, we talk about GDP, and that's a Q2, and it's still pretty old.

Jeremy Robb:

But the data we see weekly, we have seen four weeks in a row of negative year over year consumer spending growth. That's not something you typically see. That's nominal, so it's based into higher prices. The only thing that's moving positive over the last month or so is still seeing gas stations spending up a little bit because of those higher prices. Everything else is negative.

Jeremy Robb:

And if anything, it looks like it's going more negative recently. And that data goes through about the first week of August. And then literally just this morning, we got the retail sales numbers for July that came out. Those were negative across the board. And they were expected to be mildly positive too.

Jeremy Robb:

So those things like that that is not a good outlook for the economy. It goes flies in the face of a stock market that hits all time highs, you

Erin Keating:

know, weekly.

Jeremy Robb:

Right. And then the the thing that I think tie we tie into that, you know, we talked about energy prices coming back up in July, the consumer not having the cushion to get back through that. And if you look at what they call real wage growth, which is when you get all the jobs data that comes out, you get certain other readings that comes out. One of those things is average hourly earnings, and how those are trending up or down year over year. Those are wage growth is only up about 3.3% year over year right now.

Jeremy Robb:

And then the July reading for consumer price inflation was 3.4. So you've got a negative print on your wage growth, meaning your purchasing power is diminishing. And that's four months in a row that we've had that data point. So I feel a little bit more worried. Yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

So I don't like to feel that way, but I do. And if you look at all the tea leaves, like some of them aren't that way. I listened to your, the last podcast where you had Zoe and Alex on, yesterday driving back. And Zoe mentioned the, you know, the K shaped economy. And There was an article on something this week where Scott Vessel was talking about the C shaped economy.

Jeremy Robb:

But it's really hard to think about consumers and businesses and anybody riding the tech wave doing super, super well and kind of leaving behind a lot of others

Erin Keating:

on the Sure. Truly turning that have and have not story even more severe, I guess, is what you're saying. And I think it's like, you know, the interesting thing when you were talking about it, when we saw the notes about gas station, you know, purchasing is still up. You know, obviously, people are needing to still get from point A to point B. They're prioritizing being able to get to places just like we often hear.

Erin Keating:

They prioritize their car payments over other payments, etcetera. So you might feel positive like, oh, well, if those prices just go down, if this war in Iran just goes away and those go down. But if you don't have that real wage growth delta working in their favor, then no, the the wallet's still completely Yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

A it's a finite resource. Right? Right. You got a $100 and you got to allocate them as you see fit. Means you got to cut back on other things.

Erin Keating:

Yeah, absolutely. And I know that you wanted to talk a little bit about Manheim prices. Anything interesting there that sort of connects to all of this?

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. I wanted to talk in two things related to the auto business specifically. One was interest rates. How have interest rates been going with the treasury yields being a little bit higher and things like that, and then Mannheim values overall. So on the interest rate front, and I wanted to do this because it takes a little bit of time sometimes for those consumer interest rates to feed in.

Jeremy Robb:

Even though we saw rates move higher in July, we really didn't see a lot of consumer rates moving higher. I think probably lenders were waiting to see if they needed to pass that price along. But now that it stayed higher for longer through the first couple of weeks of August, we are seeing a little bit of a movement consumer rates going higher, especially the new car side. I know. And even for your super prime customer, those are up about 16 basis points year over year, prime plus is up 21.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. Across the board, we're seeing new car rates up a little bit. And on the used car side, it's a little bit more of a mixed bag and a little bit lesser of a change. So, rates are maybe up just a little bit in August relative to where they were in July. Not too much.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah, that's not something that what consumers want to see, especially for big ticket purchase items.

Erin Keating:

And we know it's been, I mean, the monthly payment, we know this has been real challenge in the automotive industry. I mean, we've talked several times, the auto price itself, the vehicle price itself isn't really necessarily the problem, but those rates have just really kept those monthly payments much higher than people are comfortable comfortable with. So yeah, not good news at all that they're continuing to go up.

Jeremy Robb:

Yeah. And it's, you know, and I just I kind of figured we might be seeing it and I just pulled the data this morning to get the most updated version. Yeah. Because it takes time to come through. Yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

But we'll see what happens with that. I think there's less of an expectation the Fed's gonna raise rates, you know, even but there's still a lot of people who think they should raise rates. Sure. Yeah. You could say it at a 3.4 consumer price index and producer prices that are in the four, mid four range.

Jeremy Robb:

Right. That's still pretty high. You know?

Erin Keating:

I know. As a mom who has to now have to go buy two cars within the next six months or at least help my children potentially buy a car, I I do not intend to take the full onus on. It's not looking good.

Jeremy Robb:

Well, you should be looking at a used vehicle. We

Erin Keating:

we can see prices. Don't you worry. Oh, yes. Teenagers should never be getting new cars. No.

Erin Keating:

No. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Robb:

We we saw the data at Manheim for the full month of July. And, actually, you know, over the weekend, we'll get the mid month data. But what prices came down quite a bit in July. I saw one of the Wall Street analysts that I talked with a lot wrote a note about it yesterday and phrased it like, Yeah, it's really dropping. I was like, That's not really what we said.

Jeremy Robb:

But they came down much more than they usually do. That was bar none. We we told that to everybody. But what they really did was correct, like catch up to, like, the long term trends or or where we normally go because we had such a strong spring. July caught up some, we saw sales conversion come down, which is just, you know, a proxy for demand.

Jeremy Robb:

But we've actually seen that sales conversion do a little bit better in the first two weeks of August. So maybe a little bit of a leveling out there. When we report the August numbers, very likely to say they were negative year over year. Because last year, the tariff induced pricing and all that really pushed. We had the secondary wave of demand late in summer, late July and August.

Jeremy Robb:

So we had pretty flat Manheim values in August last year. So a lot going on beneath the surface there too with more EVs coming back. EV day supply is now about forty days at wholesale markets and the overall markets like twenty eight days. So, we're picking up a little bit there, but a lot of moving parts. And, you know, you've got to watch all of that in concert with these consumer trends we were talking about.

Jeremy Robb:

Sure, exactly. The wholesale market will pick up on that as soon as it shows up in the retail market.

Erin Keating:

Right. Good to know. Well, with all that fun, happy, uplifting news for a Friday afternoon Friday morning. Jeremy, anything any parting thoughts before you sign off?

Jeremy Robb:

Oh, yeah. I hate I hate being the Debbie Downer

Erin Keating:

of Realism is is good and appreciated, I think.

Jeremy Robb:

But I I do think I I just think it's important to highlight where we are right now and to pay attention to it. Because if it keeps moving that direction, that's there's I don't know how that could be good. But it could stop and it could flatten out and the consumer could come back. We've seen that show a lot. Sure.

Jeremy Robb:

So we we we need to be ready for that too. We just need to you gotta keep your your pulse your finger on the pulse Yeah. Of what's going on.

Erin Keating:

Well, midterms are very close now.

Jeremy Robb:

Oh, wow. Yeah. And there's still selection stuff too. It's

Erin Keating:

like So certainly things could absolutely change, conveniently in one direction or another quickly just to to get things moving in those midterms. So fingers crossed maybe sort of if something happens Well, thanks, Jeremy. I hope you have a great weekend. Thanks for joining us as usual and offering all of these interesting contextual things that we need to think about. And and, again, congratulations to the Cox Communications and Charter Communications groups for pulling this off, and and best of luck in the new new venture.

Jeremy Robb:

Big time for Cox.

Erin Keating:

Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. Take care, Jeremy. See you, Erin.

Erin Keating:

So on the tales of everything that we're learning about the consumer and the industry, let's just sort of dive into what's actually in some of the headlines because I think there's a few interesting threads that are being pulled through that just show that the industry is really rethinking where value comes from. You know, we got our new inventory numbers showing, you know, disciplined automakers. We've got some Ford and Volkswagen announcements that I think are worth talking about. And then the last thing I just wanna briefly touch on is some things that are working over there in Aston Martin, which we don't typically focus on ultra luxury brands. You know, we're more trying to think about the average everyday consumer.

Erin Keating:

But I think it's an important thing for us to think about given where the luxury market is right now and knowing everything we're talking about with China, etcetera, etcetera. So let's dive in. So inventory, let's start there. New vehicle inventory began August at 2,730,000 units. So we're down about three and a half percent from last month, but we're roughly flat from a year ago.

Erin Keating:

And the interesting thing is that we know that July sales actually rose eight and a half percent month over month and about 2.9% year over year, which got us down to about a seventy five day supply. So ultimately, we see that the market is tightening a bit, but it's not really returning to any kind of scarcity. The average listing price held similar to how the average transaction price held, Incentive declined for the second consecutive month. So it suggests that automakers and dealers really aren't having to buy the sales with with, heavier discounting. But they also happen to be the automakers really happen to be, slow rolling their model year arrivals, which is helping to prevent sort of an early buildup in supply, while they're still continuing to offload the model year '26 inventory, which was, you know, it's interesting, we're about half the amount of model year 27s that we typically see at this point.

Erin Keating:

While the ones that are coming in are starting to build up the inventory with those particular brands, and that seems to be in luxury full size SUVs as well as full size SUVs, period. But we did see the sharpest tightening come in meaningful profit pools. So the midsize SUVs lost nearly fourteen days of supply, while full size trucks lost ten days as supplies jumped almost 16%. So relatively decent news there in the inventory, meaning that for customers who are on the lots, they can find typically what they need across the segments that they're looking at. But the automakers are also being a lot more calculated around how they're releasing their inventory.

Erin Keating:

That said, we had a couple of interesting product announcements and some big shifts globally on management and executives, etc. So let's start with Ford. Ford actually had quite a few different announcements over the last two weeks since we last spoke to you. So the first one was that they officially named their new EV that's coming on the universal EV platform. It is going to be called Fathom.

Erin Keating:

I will refrain from opining on that particular name. But it will be a four door midsize electric pickup and it's expected to come in 2027. It will be manufactured in Kentucky and starting around $30,000. A lot of people have been comparing it to the Slate. I just have to remind people, the Slate is going to come out around 6,027 thousand dollars and you'd have to add on a lot to get to where this fathom is going to come into the market with.

Erin Keating:

So I don't think they're necessarily worthy of comparing to each other. But it's interesting enough that, you know, there are companies who are saying, especially one like Ford saying, let's get back into that pickup, electric pickup, etcetera, you know, smaller electric pickup for under $30,000 So we'll see what happens there. The Ford F-one 150 Lightning obviously did not succeed as well as Ford had anticipated it to. So we'll see how this one performs once it comes to market. But what they also did was paid attention to the fact that they needed to come back into the market.

Erin Keating:

They let the Escape go. We know that that has actually pulled some of their sales down this year and allowed some of the competitors to gain some segment share there, where the Ford Escape Hole sort of ended up being in their inventory. And they did announce or they proposed to dealers that by 2029, they're going to bring back a $25,000 entry crossover, offering gas and hybrid powertrains on that car. And they teased out a four door Mustang. So really intended to stretch the brand into a new body style without really abandoning the performance nameplate that they're used to using.

Erin Keating:

So placing a couple of big bets showing that they're really going into product portfolio reset as opposed to strictly, you know, resting on their laurels with their large pickups and the Expedition as an example, which has been doing great as the large scale SUVs. So we'll see how that goes. The other side of the discussion that happened is that Ford is in, you know, they're in weekly talks with The US trade representatives and they offered some interesting notes to the media this week about how they are approaching the USMCA discussions and trade in general. So very pro USMCA needing to be finalized, wanting to see that benefit anyone and everyone that is actually producing in The United States. So they are pro those policies helping anyone, meaning, you know, even foreign automakers that are producing in The United States to benefit from a formalized USMCA agreement.

Erin Keating:

However, they are doing that alone. So we don't see a concentrated, like, unified Detroit position when talking to the USTR, which is interesting. One of the things that I think is playing into that is that on the flip side of this, they are also arguing for potentially increasing tariffs on product that comes from Japan and Korea. They're really, you know, in their terms, this is to even the playing field there because of the currency advantages that both Japan and South Korea have, as well as their strong domestic supply chains and labor costs there, etcetera, etcetera. So in practical terms, we will hear them arguing that potentially Korean imports, South Korean imports and Japanese imports should be tariffed at higher than that 15%, which of course not only goes after the Japanese manufacturers, you know, Toyotas and Hondas, and then Hyundai and Kia, but we have to remember General Motors also, builds a lot of product in South Korea.

Erin Keating:

So just an interesting take that it's not necessarily an industry wide, you know, Kumbaya come together Detroit and fight these specific tariffs, but rather that it's by individual automaker and how they are actually producing their vehicles. And that last part about Ford also announced that Lincoln is sort of reinforcing the same localization message. And this goes back to Ford trying to, you know, act as they speak, right? So they're going to actually plan to bring US Lincoln production back into The US beginning in 2030 by phasing out their China built vehicles. Granted tariffs and connected vehicle rules are making that a practical move, but again, it does support Ford's larger argument that where the vehicle is built should be more important on how it's actually priced in The US market and seen by the regulators.

Erin Keating:

So onto another big mass market brand, Volkswagen. They seem to be coming forward with a more American reset. So we know that Stellantis, when they came out and talked about their new reset and they sort of set up, you know, which brands in America were going to be really focused on, and you could tell that they understand the profit engine that The US market can be. Volkswagen and Germany manufacturers specifically, a lot of times have led with, hey, we have a portfolio of vehicles and we want you to adapt to those global portfolio designs. Rather, they sound like they're a little bit more willing to say, okay, we want to design for America.

Erin Keating:

So one of the key announcements they came out with is that they're considering bringing a pickup to the Volkswagen line in The US. I think that this is really interesting. We know that the Volkswagen dealers have been asking for this forever and that when Scout Motors came out, there was a real, you know, hubbub and now lawsuits against Scout for wanting to bring that vehicle here. But the v VW dealers specifically were very upset about the investment that Volkswagen had made in Scout because they had been asking for a pickup in a long time and had not been given one. And so now there seems to be, that is on the table, which is good.

Erin Keating:

Chattanooga plant, you know, it does need a stronger long term product role, you know, after the ID four, production ended there. And I do think that this is, you know, segment that every manufacturer is looking to bring into. And certainly, this could be a signal to Volkswagen dealers to sort of ease up on the opposition to Scott's Scott Keogh's, Scout's direct sales model. So we shall see how that goes. I think the broader message again is still that Volkswagen appears willing to build around what American buyers want to purchase rather than asking the market to adapt to their design.

Erin Keating:

And furthermore, down in the portfolio, we actually saw that Audi of America has named a new Chief Marketing Officer while they're right now going through a big product launch cycle. And we also saw that Keel Gruner is actually out as CEO in The US and that they are bringing on a new CEO in the Volkswagen Group of America. So a couple big things happening there to watch. The last thing that I think is a pretty interesting story is there was news around Aston Martin. So Aston Martin is testing a financial model that other struggling luxury brands, even maybe those like the Audis and the Mercedes and BMWs, you know, Germany is having a challenge right now because of their heavy reliance on China previously, as well as any other major luxury brand.

Erin Keating:

China really put a big dent into a lot of the sales there when sales stopped growing as fast over there. And one thing that Aston Martin is doing is actually planning to transfer about 50% stake in its non automotive intellectual property over to Authentic Brands Group, which would mean that they would be monetizing the name across lifestyle categories while keeping the road car business separate. Now, Lawrence Stroll, who actually now runs Aston Martin as well as the F1 effort that they have, is very famous for this. He built his career around turning around brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors. So this makes sense that his knee jerk reaction would be to say, hey, this is a luxury brand and it means something and we can actually monetize the business around that.

Erin Keating:

He clearly understands the value of the name beyond the physical product. You know, there is also Ferrari and Porsche who have also, for the long term, you know, monetized their brands through tightly managed merchandise, you know, design businesses, selective licensing partnerships. Here, the difference is that Aston Martin would actually be giving an outside manager a majority control of its non automotive rights, mainly because it really needs the cash to help its manufacturing business right now. Now that could work given how much and how heavily Aston Martin has invested in their F1 efforts. F1 is becoming a much more popular global brand, if you will.

Erin Keating:

And so it could help, but it's got the shareholders up in arms because if all that is left is a very expensive manufacturing car company and the licensing rights don't necessarily lift that brand ethos, then what happens to the shareholders that are holding on to the manufacturing, you know, expense heavy business? So we will wait to see what is happening here. But for other niche luxury automakers, this might be, you know, a little bit more about, you know, what does it look like to sell the name and have the name and the brand work a little bit harder rather than figuring out a disciplined way to make the production and the streetcars work a little bit harder. So an interesting twist, we know that luxury brands have continuously looked for ways to build their brands beyond the products that they actually see on the roads. So truth will play out in the pudding, I guess, as we see, or proof will play out in the pudding, as we say.

Erin Keating:

So that's it for this episode. We appreciate you being here. You can find more of our insights on coxautoinc.com. And if the conversation was useful, please do like the episode, subscribe to The Auto Market Brief, and share it with someone who follows the market as closely as we do. We'll be back next week with some more economic high notes and industry headlines that matter as well as our special bonus episodes.

Erin Keating:

Alright. Thanks and take care. Thanks for joining us on this episode of The Auto Market Brief. To stay up to date with all the latest news and perspectives from our team of experts, be sure to visit our insights hub at coxautoinc.com.