Publisher’s letter

For car dealers, this isn’t their first rodeo. They’ve lived through recessions and economic downturns of all shapes and sizes, OEM bankruptcies, onerous factory image overhauls and all manner of upheaval — and survived. But even by the standards of the turbulent auto industry, this pandemic has challenged dealers to […]

The cover of this issue was designed to get your attention — so you would read this note. Amid all the upheaval and adjustments we’re making as a result of the pandemic, I felt it important to change focus for a moment. Actually, I see it not so much as […]

I love this time of year. It’s finally warm in Toronto, and no doubt across most of the country as well. Everything is green and growing; the picture of new, vibrant life. It’s a time of renewal. A time of year when it’s very easy to feel optimistic. At the […]

The news is now dominated by questions around reopening and restarting the economy. That’s good. The economy can’t sustain the level of lockdown we’ve endured through April. Your businesses can’t sustain it, nor can mine.  Here’s the challenge, as we all know: from an epidemiological standpoint, nothing has changed. We […]

I don’t know where to begin. But I need to say something, so here goes… Let me start with this: car dealers are the most creative, entrepreneurial, and community-minded group of people I have ever met. The situation we face will challenge all of us. I know that dealers from […]

Experiential retail. Direct-to-consumer commerce. Look for a lot of coverage on these two topics (closely linked topics, in fact) in Canadian auto dealer in coming issues. They are very important in terms of the current transformation of retail across categories. They both represent topics that will need deep and broad […]

IKEA is on my mind. It should be on yours. I moved recently. And it got me thinking about remote service and the opportunity for dealers. We needed to get a bunch of new beds, as our move is combining two families a la Brady Bunch (I’m guessing most dealers […]

By now I imagine most of you have seen and read Driving the Road Ahead: A View into the Future of Canadian Automobile Retailing, the research paper published this past spring by the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association (CADA). This comprehensive document provides an important look into the forces and factors […]