Autonomi logo
Automotive Under 5 cover art

Episode · Monday, September 7, 2026 · 4:25

SAAR Hits Its Best Month of the Year

August closed at a sixteen point eight million selling rate, the strongest month of the year and the sixth straight above sixteen million, per Cox Automotive. Ford's overall sales fell ten percent even as its EV volume dropped nearly eighty percent, Ford Authority writes, and four automakers combined to recall close to half a million vehicles this week. CBT News covers a new bill aimed at foreign automakers' security risk, filed as the US-Canada tariff dispute over Toyota and Honda stays unresolved. Motor Trader has the UK government meeting Jaguar Land Rover this week, following four thousand reported job losses, and Money dot ca finds a Chinese automaker circling Stellantis's idle Ontario plant. None of it changes what a dealer orders Monday, but it changes what that order costs.

In this episode

Questions from this episode

What was August's seasonally adjusted annual selling rate according to Cox Automotive?

Cox Automotive's updated estimate, released September 2, put August's selling rate at 16.8 million, the strongest pace of 2026 and the sixth straight month above 16 million, the longest streak since March 2020. Total volume still fell about 5.8% year over year to roughly 1.38 million units, which beat the 8.5% drop Cox had forecast.

What does the Automotive National and Economic Security Act of 2026 propose?

The Automotive National and Economic Security Act of 2026 would direct the Commerce Secretary to study security risk from foreign automakers, according to CBT News. It comes as the US-Canada tariff dispute over Toyota and Honda remains unresolved.

Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyListen on Amazon Music
Subscribe

In any other player using the RSS feed. Every article referenced in an episode is linked on its page.

Evergreen · How to for dealers

AUTONOMi Playbooks

Step-by-step guides for the operational decisions dealers make every week — attribution, budget, AI-answer-engine visibility, BDC ops.

Playbook9 min
01Featured

How to Instrument AI Answer Engine Visibility for a Dealer Group

AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search and Perplexity now intercept research-phase queries that used to land on your VDP. You cannot optimize what you cannot measure — here is the instrumentation plan for a multi-rooftop group.

Read Playbook
Playbook
0210 min

How to Run a Weekly Multi-Channel Attribution Cadence Without Losing Cross-Channel Signal

Read Playbook
Playbook
0311 min

How to Rebuild a Broken BDC Callback Cadence in 14 Days

Read Playbook
See all playbooks
Or skip the DIY

Don't want to run these playbooks yourself?

AUTONOMi executes every one of these operations for your dealer group — attribution cadence, LLMO instrumentation, BDC rebuild, budget reallocation — as a subscription. Same discipline, none of the ops load.

  • Playbooks work only when someone runs them every week. AUTONOMi never skips a Monday.
  • Every decision hash-chained through AXIOM. Full audit trail, not a black box.
  • Flat monthly fee. No agency % of spend. Cancel any time.
Start NowTalk to Sales