Three days after the FTC dismissed its payment-packing complaint against Asbury, the agency turned around and settled with Orlando's Greenway Auto Group over advertised prices that allegedly landed thousands of dollars short of what buyers actually paid. Read those two moves together and the message isn't "enforcement is over" — it's that the advertised-price-to-out-the-door gap is still the thing regulators can prove with a stack of deal jackets. Vendors are already selling the fix, pitching one true price synced across every listing site under federal and California rules. Worth a read before you price your next window sticker, because the FTC doesn't need a trial to make an example of a store your size.

CDK says the bestselling cars hit a record $36,418 average in September, up 2.7% year over year, with Toyota holding four of the top spots. Meanwhile the New York Fed logged a record $211 billion in Q2 loan originations with lenders reaching further down the credit spectrum, and Manheim's Q3 analysis now flags fuel prices as a visible drag on wholesale values. Translation for the lot: your buyers are stretching, your lenders are stretching, and the gas-guzzler you stole at auction may be repricing itself downward while it sits.

Bob Kain handed over Jack Kain Ford in Versailles, Kentucky after 66 years in the family, and DOCS Dealership Group bought Downtown Ford Sacramento from the Price family the same day. Two long-tenured family stores, two multi-state buyers, one week. If you're an independent with a lifetime of equity tied up in a lot and no documented plan for it, the estate-tax piece making the rounds is the least glamorous and most useful thing you'll read today.

Auto Dealer Today makes the case that customer-pay repair orders carry the service department's profit — and that plenty of stores can't tell you what share of their work is customer-pay versus warranty or internal. Independents don't have warranty work to hide behind, which makes the number even more knowable and even more embarrassing to not know. With front-end gross under pressure from transparent pricing and thinning margins, the bay is where the next point of profit actually lives.