#Autonation

AutoNation won’t sell any cars with open recalls, used or new, at its dealerships, according to Automotive News.

AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said the costly policy would mean that roughly 5 percent to 10 percent of cars on its lots would be unsellable at any one time. The change in policy for AutoNation comes while different bills work their way through Congress that could prohibit used car dealers to sell cars without recall repair work.

“The recall situation for the U.S. auto industry is a black eye. It is a dysfunctional nightmare that the industry should be ashamed of, and customers are right to be angry and confused,” Jackson told Automotive News. “As part of the industry, we have to hold a mirror up and say, ‘What can we do better as a company?'”

TrueCar CEO Scott Painter will leave the company at the end of this year, Automotive News is reporting.

Painter announced he was leaving the company after TrueCar announced it had lost $14.7 million in the second quarter on $65.3 million revenue.

“After a decade of building TrueCar from an idea into a public company, I have come to the conclusion reached by many founders and entrepreneurs in my position: It is time for a change.” Painter said in a statement according to Automotive News.

Painter will remain on the company’s board of directors.

TrueCar CEO Scott Painter said his company will miss expected earnings for the second quarter, and said the company needed a “wake-up” in his call, Automotive News is reporting.

The news sent shares of TrueCar plummeting more than 35 percent. TrueCar closed Friday down 3.81 down to $6.87 per share.

Painter said a lack of marketing was to blame for the company’s struggles in the second quarter, not the recent highly publicized split with AutoNation.

Automotive News has interesting insight into the tenuous, and now soon-to-end, relationship between TrueCar and car dealer-giant AutoNation.

The report details a May lunch between TrueCar CEO Scott Painter, President John Krafcik and Senior Vice President of Dealer Development Mike Timmons, and AutoNation COO Bill Berman and Chief Marketing Officer Marc Cannon. At the lunch, TrueCar executives reportedly said they would require data from all AutoNation sales — regardless if they were generated by TrueCar — for the two companies to continue doing business.

“Over my dead body,” AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said later, according to Automotive News.

Details between the AutoNation and TrueCar split are becoming clear, Automotive News is reporting.

After yesterday’s announcement that the web service and nationwide dealership chain were splitting up — in which AutoNation laid most of the blame on unreasonable demands by TrueCar during contract negotiations — the company’s respective CEOs have been getting nasty.

“Our partnership with AutoNation just turned into, in a very real sense, a choice for the consumer,” TrueCar CEO Scott Painter told Automotive News. “It really makes them our competition.”

The nation’s largest auto dealer will stop using TrueCar’s lead generation at the end of this month, Automotive News is reporting.

The split is largely focused on the use of customer information and contract demands. AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson didn’t mince words.

“TrueCar has made some onerous demands in its new contract negotiations with us that are unprecedented in my 45 years in business and are unconscionable and unacceptable. We cannot agree to them,” Jackson told Automotive News.

Though the anti-Tesla legislation recently signed into Michigan law is only a clarification of a previous anti-direct sales law, AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson finds the whole thing as “unnecessary protectionism.”

Automotive retailer AutoNation is pulling used vehicles off the lot that may be affected by the ongoing Takata airbag recall.

AutoNation, which is America’s largest dealership chain, is embarking on a two-year, $100-million project that will include that creation of an app that will allow shoppers to purchase cars online, in a method similar to traditional e-commerce.

100,000 miles?

200,000 miles?

300,000 miles?

Everyone has a certain point with their daily driver when they would rather see money back in their pocket, instead of seeing more money fall out of their pocket.

Time marches on. That old clunker loses it’s endearing qualities and then, what do you do?

Well, the answer depends a lot on what type of vehicle you’re trying to sell… which is why I’m introducing Carmax’s wholesale operations into this write-up.

Mike Jackson, the CEO of AutoNation, the largest retail dealer group in the United States, told CNBC that the domestic automakers are carrying inordinately large amounts of inventory. Telling Just-Auto that U.S. automakers have a “pretty bizarre” way of calculating inventories that end up justifying high inventory levels, Jackson said, “But if you cut through the bogus calculations and look at dealer inventory for the Detroit Three, it’s over a 100-day supply. And it simply doesn’t need to be there.”