A Louisiana store sells new cars in all 50 states, while Toyota dealers run low on RAV4s and GM earns more from software fees paid straight to it.
This week the limit is cars and paperwork, not customers.
A Chrysler, Jeep and Ram store in Lake Charles, Louisiana sold 4,013 new vehicles in 2025, according to Car Dealership Guy. Before it changed how it sells, it moved about 1,200 to 1,300 a year. Owner Mark Boniol says buyers in all 50 states have bought from it in each of the last three calendar years.
Now look at the other end. Toyota dealers have about four days of RAV4 supply, per a Wall Street Journal report summarized by Car Dealership Guy. And GM said on October 20 that its North American business earned an 8.7 percent margin, up from 6.2 percent a year earlier, in its filing.
The big picture: the factory is earning more and building a monthly software bill that customers pay to GM. A national seller can win the customer without a showroom. The store in the middle keeps the car, the paperwork and the keys, and that is the weakest place to stand unless you also own the customer.
The dealer principal asks the F&I director this week what would stop the store from closing a deal with a customer it never meets.
Whether GM or any other automaker says dealers will share in the monthly software fees paid through the car.
Mark Dodge in Lake Charles sold 4,013 new vehicles in 2025, per Car Dealership Guy's profile published October 20. Louisiana buyers took 1,789, or 45 percent. Texas buyers took 1,098.
Here is how it works, in Boniol's telling. Customers sign through a shared screen with Reynolds and Reynolds, the dealer management system vendor, and can buy and finance in under an hour. A titling team registers cars in every county. A manager and two employees book shipping through outside carriers, and shipping is free within 300 miles. About 83 people work there, all licensed in Louisiana. The sales team is paid a flat amount per sale, not commission, and does not negotiate.
Boniol says this costs 42 percent of what the traditional way costs. That is his figure, and the profile gives no gross profit per car. He also says F&I profit per vehicle was cut in half when remote signing began in January 2020. The profile does not say whether it came back.
The pay plan is the idea, not the software. A store can only sell a car it will never hand over in person if nobody on the team loses money when the price is low. Most stores pay commission on gross, so most cannot copy this without rewriting how people are paid. The limit is cars: Boniol says the waiting list for the Ram TRX has about 1,600 names, and the factory's allocation caps what he can sell. Carvana now lists new Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles on its own site, per a DealerRefresh thread. The national seller is no longer only a used-car story.
Find where your pay plan punishes a low-priced sale to an out-of-area buyer. Then decide whether to change it for one team as a test.
Work out how much F&I profit per car you would give up for remote signing, and how many extra deals it would have to bring.
Toyota dealers in the U.S. have roughly four days of RAV4 supply, according to Car Dealership Guy, citing the Wall Street Journal, on October 21. North American RAV4 output fell 30 percent through September, per the consulting firm AutoForecast Solutions. Deliveries were 253,664 through September, down 29 percent from 358,134 a year earlier. That is about 104,470 fewer cars.
Toyota kept building 2025 models into late 2025, which delayed retooling for the new 2026 RAV4. Its Canadian and Kentucky plants are now at full capacity and build more than 30,000 RAV4s a month. Toyota North America sales chief Damon Rose said of the delay: "It has certainly put us in a little bit of a hole to dig out of." The summary gives no prices, markups or dealer stock counts.
A Toyota store with almost no RAV4s has a volume problem, not a demand problem. That suggests the gross on the few cars it does get cannot make up for 29 percent fewer deliveries. My bet: through January, the stores that keep their service customers and buy used RAV4 trade-ins will look better than the stores waiting for new cars. I am wrong if Toyota's plants catch up and dealer supply is back to normal by then.
List the RAV4 owners in your service records who might trade, and call them before another store does. Your used supply starts there.
GM reported on October 20 that its North American business earned $3.6 billion before interest and taxes, an 8.7 percent margin, up from 6.2 percent, per its filing. It raised its full-year cash flow guidance to $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion and approved a new $20 billion share buyback.
WardsAuto reports that revenue from Super Cruise, GM's hands-free driving feature, grew about 60 percent in the quarter. Drivers pay $39.99 a month or $399 a year through OnStar, GM's connected-car service. GM expects 850,000 Super Cruise subscribers by year end, and about $7.5 billion this year in software and service revenue that customers pay ahead of time. CEO Mary Barra said trucks will drive more of it in 2027. The article does not mention dealers.
The factory is building a bill the customer pays to GM every month, long after your sale. If your salespeople explain and activate the feature, ask whether you earn anything when the customer subscribes. If not, you are doing the selling for free. My bet: by the end of 2027, dealer groups will be asking automakers publicly for a share of these fees, and at least one automaker will agree. I am wrong if no dealer agreement mentions it by then.
Ask your GM district representative in writing whether dealers earn anything when a customer starts paying for Super Cruise.
Leave software-fee income out of your forecast until you have it in writing.
A shopper writes at 9:57 p.m. and software books a 10 a.m. visit. Durran Cage of Cage Automotive says that in one case the salesperson did not know who the customer had talked to, per CBT News. His mystery shopping found about four different names contacting a customer in the first 72 hours.
The limit is people, not software. The handoff fails when nobody owns it. The software may answer and book. It should say it is a virtual assistant and offer a real person. It should not quote a price or a trade value. A manager reads a sample of conversations each week and sends the odd ones to a named person. Keep a record of who handled each lead and when.
Early sign: a faster handoff. What really counts: more customers who show up, compared with last month. Cage suggests aiming for 30 to 40 percent of leads turning into appointments. The article names no vendor and reports no results from his store.
LeadVantage, a company that sells lead monitoring, says about one in four outbound phone numbers dealers use to reach leads were flagged as spam by at least one of Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T, per Car Dealership Guy on October 21. It also says about 5 percent of lead forms had problems that could keep inquiries from reaching the store. About 7 percent of inbound numbers had problems. About 16 percent of outbound email accounts had delivery risk.
The article does not say how many stores were audited, and LeadVantage monitors about 100 rooftops. These are the vendor's own numbers, and it sells the fix. The test is still cheap. Before buying more lead sources or more AI, find out whether your calls and forms reach the customer. Ask your phone vendor: how many of my outbound numbers did the carriers flag last month, and who tells me?
The business development center (BDC) manager owns this.
By October 30, send ten test leads through your lead sources, using phones on Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. Count three things: how many different people contact each lead in 72 hours, how long the first reply takes, and whether your calling number shows as spam. Report to the general manager after one week and stop. If the average is more than two names per lead, or any number shows as spam, fix that before you buy anything. I am wrong if every lead gets one clear owner within an hour and no number is flagged. Then your problem is somewhere else.
If the factory keeps the software fees and a national seller keeps the customer, what exactly is your store being paid for?