Welcome to today's edition of the Daily 5.
Before June 19, a major dealership group agreeing to a dealership management system contract would be fairly routine news.
But since that day, it's a lot more significant as CDK Global continues to recover from the devastating cyberattack that disrupted auto sales and service operations at roughly 15,000 U.S. dealerships for nearly three weeks — and raised questions about the future security of all DMS providers.
CDK said today it signed a DMS contract extension with Sonic Automotive Inc. Sonic of Charlotte, N.C., ranks No. 6 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S.
As our Mark Hollmer explains in his story, the news reinforces CDK's reputation in the DMS business and, presumably, will help the company land more extensions and new business.
In other news, Ken Ganley updated us with the loss totals from Hurricane Helene's floods that devastated his Kia store in New Port Richey, Fla. The tally: 660 new and used vehicles, all losses, plus 12 customer cars that were in for service, all totaled. Our story has some pretty compelling photos of the damage.
The good news? The store reopened Sept. 29.
We also have an update on the aftermath of Helene from our retail team.
In Washington state, a rebate program to incentivize electric vehicle sales has been a huge hit with consumers and the $45 million in funding for the program is going to be exhausted months ahead of time. Jack Walsworth's story tells us why the program has been so popular.
In some sad news out of Germany, legendary Mercedes-Benz designer Bruno Sacco has passed away at age 90. Reporter Richard Truett wrote this obituary today.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
