#AIDealer2027

Matthew Davis said:

Yeah - bummer. But who needs "digital" now anyway? Time to rebrand to "AI Dealer" and blammo! They'll be sold out in minutes!

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that's funny! And sadly, it could work.

The number I heard was 100. Regardless, that's abysmal. Used to be a great show that when I left, felt I was taking value home, and potential new clients. I guess those days are gone.

MattCopley said:

Expect Claude to do likewise in the very near future.

Sianara magical early window.

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What is the time expectation?

MattCopley said:

I just feel bad for all the projects kicking off now... The early days are over and the subsidized builder space is sunsetting fast. Welcome to IPO for sure. AI is gonna start burning in-house cash and new startups really fast.

Expect Claude to do likewise in the very near future.

Sianara magical early window.

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ya,@Alex Snyder was 1st to point out to me that when wall street stops funding the free ride, AI dev work costs are going to explode. I am boot strap and dammm the costs are rising fast but the work I get done is magical.

One of my favorites was the email response rate. Send a bunch of emails but get single-digit responses, and I know you need training.

What got me into this was a salesperson at our Honda store who had an AMAZING email open rate. Zero response rate. It made no sense. The subject line to every email was "I just want to FU"

Chris Cachor said:

Wanted to share a quick demo

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A website UX that ends in a lead is so 2025.
Chris has made a staged delivery process with a transparent path into your store (that you can trace to the ad source!)

Wanted to share a quick demo I threw together this morning for Sales Continuity and Express Delivery. Feel like now's the perfect time for something like this.

Login to view embedded media View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPQvpXzBef0

ClassicCarChris said:

Hey everyone — Chris with ASAP Transport Solutions.

I wanted to introduce our company, but also get some feedback from the dealer side of the business.

ASAP Transport Solutions is an FMCSA-authorized transportation broker (MC 815288 / USDOT 2380139), BBB A+ Accredited, and we’ve been coordinating vehicle transportation nationwide since 2012.

A large part of what we do involves dealership transportation:

• Dealer trades
• Auction-to-lot transportation
• Wholesale inventory moves
• Inventory rebalancing between stores
• Dealer-to-customer deliveries
• Open and enclosed transportation
• Individual units and multi-vehicle moves

One thing I’m curious about is how dealerships here are currently handling transportation.

Are you primarily using Central Dispatch, a dedicated broker, your own transportation department, multiple brokers/carriers, or some combination of everything?

From our side, one of the biggest advantages we see dealerships getting from a good brokerage relationship is having one point of contact who can source capacity across a large carrier network rather than being dependent on one carrier’s trucks, equipment, or lanes.

We’re obviously happy to help if anyone needs transportation, but I’m also here to contribute to the community. I’ve been in transportation for years, so if anyone has questions about carrier pricing, difficult lanes, insurance, vetting carriers, auction transportation, or why a vehicle isn’t getting picked up at a particular rate, I’m happy to give you my perspective.

Would also love to hear what dealers wish transportation companies did better.

ASAP Transport Solutions
Ship With Confidence Every Time
www.asaptransportsolutions.com

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I despise the cold calling, especially when I am still shopping the same sale they are calling about. I hang up on them every time as soon as I figure out why they are calling.

I have a good relationship with a driver who moves most of my stuff. If something is outside of his range, I will look at the carrier who is partnered with the site I am purchasing from. Most of my sites utilize carsarrive and I will usually use that for the quick and easy way to purchase it at checkout. If I don't think the price is fair I would get in touch with one broker I use from time-to-time.

Dealer Inspire had better get this fixed fast.

GPT assessment of DI:
The feed is accessible. The cause of the vehicle-page failure is still unknown.

The exact URLs are:

• Maguire group inventory: https://www.maguirecars.com/llm/inventory/
• Chevrolet used inventory: https://www.maguirecars.com/llm/inventory/?make=Chevrolet&type=used
• The feed that returned your Tahoe: https://www.maguirechevroletofithaca.com/llm/inventory/?bodytype=SUVs&type=used. Its indexed result listed your VIN and 10,334 miles.

I need to correct my earlier explanation: I constructed the vehicle-page URL from a common URL pattern. I did not obtain it from the dealer’s actual listing link. Its failure therefore does not prove Maguire blocks AI.

What this session established:

Your first diagnostic step is to test the actual Tahoe listing URL. Then check server logs for crawler requests and response codes. Those checks distinguish a wrong URL, a security block, and a page-rendering problem.

This session shows a discovery advantage for CarGurus, but it does not establish the cause of Maguire’s low AI traffic.
Cloudflare is a plausible cause, but this session does not prove a Cloudflare block. My retrieval tool returned “not accessible.” It supplied no HTTP status, response headers, or Cloudflare challenge page.
Cloudflare can block or challenge automated requests through its bot protection and firewall rules. Being a Cloudflare customer does not establish that DealerInspire enabled those rules for Maguire.

Ask DealerInspire to check this:

Check Cloudflare Security Events for Maguire’s domain around October 3, 2026, 10:05–10:16 a.m. Eastern. Identify any blocked or challenged AI retrieval requests. Return the requested URL, action, matched rule, user agent, and Ray ID. Also check AI crawler controls and bot protection settings.

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A matching Block or Managed Challenge event would establish Cloudflare’s role. Without that evidence, blaming Cloudflare would be premature—especially because my attempted vehicle URL was constructed and may have been wrong.


Dealer Inspire says its Cloudflare configuration allows trusted AI access. A blanket AI block would conflict with its published policy.

Two official pages address this directly:

These are Dealer Inspire’s published claims, not verification of Maguire’s actual configuration.

For Maguire, the next step is to verify that the live configuration matches that policy. Our search found inventory-feed data, but my failed vehicle-page request used a constructed URL. That failure cannot establish a Cloudflare block.

Ask Dealer Inspire: “Does Maguire’s domain follow your published AI-access policy, and can you demonstrate successful AI retrieval of this Tahoe’s actual vehicle page?”

From a biz POV, this shooter is a pro. Their attention to detail is great, but, this shooter KNOWS who's looking at his pics and the shooter is making an effort to make the shopper/viewer happy.









2 thumbs up, way up
(and no AI and no booth)

DISC?
Hell Yea.

carguyfiles said:

To be fair to DI, their own page says they let verified crawlers from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic through Cloudflare. Grok and Perplexity aren't on that list, which matches your test.

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GPT = No Dealer Inspire
"I could not read Maguire’s page directly, so the dealer still needs to confirm the advertised price."

Tony.Steen said:

That's so interesting.

What if attention spans are shrinking so fast that people are missing out on their perfect car because they aren't willing to go through all the photos???

For example, they would've bought this one but since adaptive cruise was buried, they never saw it, so they hit the exit and went to another car or dealer site.

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That is what we suspected was happening when we ran the study 11 years ago. Totally anecdotal reference, but raising 4 teenagers over that period of time tells me that attention spans didn't get longer.

"Give the customer what they want" has become "Anticipate what the customer wants and give it to them BEFORE they ask for it."

Great write-up, Michael. Thank you. Any thoughts about dealer inspire sites being behind the Cloudflare wall?

Dealer Inspire dealers should be very mad.

Example, a car shopper writes:

"I like this car, can you find me one like this at a better price? My zip is 13029.
https://www.maguirecars.com/invento...-base-fwd-4d-sport-utility-5xyzt3lb0jg526346/"

Grok:
That listing is a 2018 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport 2.4 Base, front-wheel drive, VIN 5XYZT3LB0JG526346. Maguire’s own page is blocked, but Autotrader has:

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Grok Output:

Offer Still Valid:

If you are a dealer and looking to improve trade-in lead quality, we can help. Every lead delivered from our technology has a verified mobile number, VIN, and shopper's name.

Reach out anytime!

Currently, the AIs that I've been using to go car shopping are using the third-party sites, classified sites, to go used car shopping. It was always my thought that AI would recognize that the inventory on these sites is not complete and that they would go past these aggregators and go directly to the retailer that's selling it. This is not the case so far in my circles.

Someone _should_ build an aggregator site just for AI that links to all dealers, or rather, presents the data from all dealers into an AI-centric, machine-centered UI. No advertisers, no fake sorting. Maybe some sort of simple subscription, just to validate the dealers' authenticity, to become a source of authority for the AI machines.

I think the biggest takeaway is that customers are becoming a lot less loyal to one powertrain and a lot more sensitive to what makes sense for their actual situation.

Gas jumps and suddenly EV searches go up. EV depreciation gets heavy and now a used EV can look like a tremendous value. At the same time, plenty of people still look at charging, range, insurance and resale and decide a hybrid or ICE vehicle makes more sense for them.

From the dealership side, I don’t think the answer is to bet everything on EVs or fight against them either. It is having the right mix of inventory and being able to explain the tradeoffs honestly.

What I’m seeing more and more is that the customer really wants someone to help answer: What actually fits my life?

How far do I drive? Can I charge at home? What will it cost me to own? What happens when I trade it? Is the incentive strong enough to make the numbers work?

That is probably where hybrids continue to have a strong lane too. They solve a lot of the fuel-cost concern without asking the customer to completely change how they use the vehicle.

To me, the winners are going to be the dealers who can sell all three without turning it into an EV versus gas argument. Give the customer the real numbers, the real tradeoffs, and let the right vehicle win.

I think the biggest takeaway is that customers are becoming a lot less loyal to one powertrain and a lot more sensitive to what makes sense for their actual situation.


Gas jumps and suddenly EV searches go up. EV depreciation gets heavy and now a used EV can look like a tremendous value. At the same time, plenty of people still look at charging, range, insurance and resale and decide a hybrid or ICE vehicle makes more sense for them.


From the dealership side, I don’t think the answer is to bet everything on EVs or fight against them either. It is having the right mix of inventory and being able to explain the tradeoffs honestly.


What I’m seeing more and more is that the customer really wants someone to help answer: What actually fits my life?


How far do I drive? Can I charge at home? What will it cost me to own? What happens when I trade it? Is the incentive strong enough to make the numbers work?


That is probably where hybrids continue to have a strong lane too. They solve a lot of the fuel-cost concern without asking the customer to completely change how they use the vehicle.


To me, the winners are going to be the dealers who can sell all three without turning it into an EV versus gas argument. Give the customer the real numbers, the real tradeoffs, and let the right vehicle win.

joeseph said:

you're very wrong I've dealt with both traders is a lot bigger than eblock in Canada anyways.

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joeseph said:

had terrible experience at block Edmonton Alberta, staff abusing their power and lying to



FRAUD ALERT,, scammers, im pretty sure the Edmonton location in Alberta the manager is running a scam with his wholesale buddies

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Two things:

1. You're quoting something I wrote 8 years ago. Things change.
2. What proof do you have?

Tony.Steen said:

What am I missing?

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Holy Old Thread Batman, but a personal blast from the past as I joined the team at CarStory shortly after this data was released. I'm teasing you here, but what you're missing is the context from 11 years ago.

We got lightly skewered over this back then for the same reason you are questioning it today, our initial assessment was wrong, this didn't have anything to do with "image fatigue," it had to do with suboptimal consumer journey. It makes a lot more sense in that light.

Tony.Steen said:

Am I an idiot but doesn't this imply that having 0 pictures is better than having 20 or 30 images???

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Close, but no. The study actually showed that having the right 9 pictures in an optimal order generated far better results than any number greater than 9 that lacked quality and were in an order that didn't resonate with consumers.

Example: Consumers spent a lot of time on the vent to vent interior shot, second only to the hero. Psychologically this makes a lot of sense. I care what it looks like to my neighbors in my driveway and then I care about what it looks like to me as the driver.... but this image was almost never second in the stack because of the way photographers at the time shot the inventory. They took all exteriors before moving inside so that image was buried behind four identical wheel shots, a trunk, a sexy plastic cover over a motor... you get the idea. Consumers defected BEFORE they saw what might have hooked them.

Fast forward 11 years to today and check this out...

I screenshotted this off of a random vdp a minute ago. Images look great, but I think we still have room to learn from the study you shared that is over a decade old at this point. Image order matters to the consumer shopping experience.

Think mobile...

The "vent to vent" is still really deep in the stack for this dealer. That is 15 swipes. 9 swipes to see the color of the interior.. 22 to the panoramic sunroof that is a $1600 option... I've got a shot under the hood 10 swipes before a visual of the adaptive cruise (when was the last time you opened your hood? wait a minute... this the Hurricane with no oil dipstick. we need a close up of the windshield washer fluid reservoir for this to make sense.)

Again, thanks for bouncing this historical artifact to the top of the stack. I think it's a great reminder that as the technology advances and improves we always need to be mindful of the consumer journey.

joe.pistell said:

AI on Main Street, sept 2026.
My next-door neighbor, a single mom, is undergoing a rigorous divorce by an alpha husband, and she's a wallflower. Her attorney is passive, and her ex's attorney is motovated and is on the warpath. I sat her down and got her set up with a ChatGPT paid subscription, and it will become her assistant. I fully expect AI to reduce her workload and stress by an order of magnitude.

I was the executor of my father's estate, and the family beneficiaries didn't like the decisions I was making. I was challenged legally. The bandwidth required for me to execute my job was so overwhelming that, if it wasn't for AI, it would have overwhelmed me. My legal team generated 900 pages of documents to defend my work. Without AI, the legal costs would have gone up exponentially.

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Also excellent for summarizing a contract. Just be careful if you're putting sensitive contractual information into an AI you are not paying much for. Their own agreements can be suspect.

joe.pistell said:

3.5 years under construction, my startup is building a merchandising powerhouse with many industry 1sts.

I am looking for Beta dealers that want to see our newest invention applied to your used inventory. Let me know here, or DM me or send me an email [email protected]

Another "Dealer Refresh, you heard it here 1st"

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Joe - this announcement is so important to you that it is worth a new thread. People are going to miss this because it is buried behind 20 pages of posts.