The 2026 Dealer Reality Check with Inga Maurer (NADA26)

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Most people come to NADA looking for the thing that’s going to “save” their year.

A new tool.
A new strategy.
A new shortcut.

But here’s what hit me after sitting down with Inga Maurer at the Encore in Vegas…

The optimism is still here.
The math is not.

Inga and I went places in this conversation that most people avoid on the show floor. Not because they don’t care, but because it’s uncomfortable to say out loud.

And if you’re a dealer, an operator, an OEM leader, or anyone building in this space, you’re going to feel that discomfort… in a good way.

Because this episode isn’t about hype.
It’s about what’s actually happening.

Here’s what we get into:

  • Why 2026 could be a “flat year” in volume, and why that matters more than people want to admit.

  • The affordability problem nobody has a clean answer for (and why even 0% doesn’t magically fix payments).

  • What happens if “cheap new cars” show up in the U.S. market and why that wouldn’t be the simple solution people think it is.

  • The inventory pendulum swing we all lived through… and how quickly we forgot the real lesson.

  • The uncomfortable truth: most stores don’t have a shortage of cars, they have a shortage of the right cars for the right customer in the right ZIP code.

  • And why the dealers who win won’t be the ones who chase every new vendor… they’ll be the ones who have a north star and use tech to sail faster.

Inga brings a rare combination of deep data rigor and real-world practicality. She challenges the idea of quick fixes. She reminds us that technology is an accelerator not a strategy. And she makes a powerful case for building an orchestration layer around your data before you chase the next shiny solution.

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