The Ringlead Weekly: 280% in a Town of 5,000

If it seems like every quarter is tighter than the last one, this week’s numbers say you’re right. Profits dropped 11.2% industry-wide. The FTC started sending letters to dealers about their ad pricing. Used inventory hit record lows. But the biggest story this week isn’t about money or regulators. It’s about a guy who bought a dying store in a town most people drive through and outsold half his zone in months.

The Big One: 280% of Objective in a Town of 5,000

Whiteville, North Carolina. Population 5,000. Median household income: $48,000. One Chevy GMC store that was bleeding when Scott Simons bought it.

He starts his day at 4:30 AM. He met with every employee individually, offered each a chance to stay, and then did three things.

He looked at who was actually walking in. Half his market needed credit help. So he hired a subprime financing specialist and started running anonymized approval stories on social media. Customers who’d been turned away from other stores started showing up.

He stopped chasing per-unit gross on trucks his market couldn’t afford. He stocked GMC Trax units and let volume build the brand.

He printed GM zone rankings every morning and taped them to the wall so his team could see exactly where they stood against every store in the zone.

And he showed up in the community. Sponsoring local events, attending school programs, making personal appearances. He was an outsider buying a store in a small town, and he knew the only way to earn that market was to be visible in it. Community goodwill is tough to measure in direct ROI but impossible to ignore for long-term success.

Within months: 280% of new-vehicle objective. Parts up 150%. Service up 258%. Tied for zone leader. 4.9 stars on Google and 137 Facebook reviews since November.

Worth Your 5 Minutes

FTC: Warning Letters to 97 Auto Groups on Deceptive Pricing — The price in the ad has to be the price the customer pays. That’s what the FTC told 97 dealer groups in March. Lindsay Auto Group already got hit with full refunds plus penalties after advertising prices customers couldn’t get, then packing F&I products nobody asked for. Pull your top 10 online ads Monday and compare the listed price to what a customer actually signs. If there’s a gap, close it before the FTC does.

Ready to measure where your store stands today? Get a free speed audit — we'll give you a baseline before you change a thing.

DealershipGuy: Dealership Profits Dipping — Net pretax profit fell 11.2% year over year in Q1. Every brand saw compressed margins. The number that matters most: fixed ops now accounts for 53.8% of total dealership gross, the highest ever recorded. Personnel costs climbed to 40% of gross. If your service department and sales floor still run separate P&L conversations, you’re splitting the same dollar in half and managing each piece blind.

Cox Automotive: Manheim Index at 213 — Used prices haven’t been this high since summer 2023. EVs up 6.2% year over year. Days supply at 25. Retail used-vehicle inventory just hit its lowest level on record. If your appraisal desk is using last quarter’s book, you’re overpaying on trades and leaving money at auction.

Canadian Auto Dealer: All 10 Provinces Post March Decline — Every province dropped. Alberta fell 11.1%. Newfoundland lost nearly a fifth of its volume. National total: 170,000 units, down 8.2%. What nobody’s saying: March 2025 had a tariff-scare buying rush that inflated the comp. Don’t measure your 2026 floor against a month where customers were panic-buying.

Data Point of the Week

43% of dealership leads are mishandled or never contacted. Pair that with dealers dropping 30-40% of inbound calls. Your ad budget didn’t fail. Your phone did. Before you spend another dollar on leads, mystery shop your own store and count the rings.

Monday Meeting Question

“If a customer with a 580 credit score walks in today, what’s our process? Do we have someone on the floor who can actually get them approved, or are we sending them down the road?”

Our Take

We keep thinking about Simons printing those rankings on paper and taping them to a wall. This industry spent the last decade buying tools when the scoreboard was free the whole time. Simons is selling out of a town you’d miss if you blinked, and he did it by knowing his market better than his market knew itself.