Only 37 car brands occupy the U.S. market, and more are headed for the door

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Our friend and colleague Adam Gaedke was in a cycling accident near his home in Kohler, Wisconsin, and suffered a critical spinal injury. He underwent major surgery and is now at one of the best facilities in the country for intense physical therapy and recovery.

Adam means a lot to me. He came to Freddy Media after a long career as the COO of the Van Horn Automotive Group. Adam built our dealer services team and will continue to lead it for years to come. He has become one of my closest friends.

— Freddy

John Murphy, former lead auto analyst at Bank of America and now founder of Murphy Automotive Partners, has a stern warning to issue to the industry:

The reason: A mispriced powertrain transition and a new class of competitors scaling out of China are weighing down legacy automakers at an accelerated pace, per the Murphy Automotive Product Pipeline (MAPP) report.

Which means the next five model years of the U.S. auto industry will come down to product. 

Small problem: new product is scarce.

The vehicle redesign rate (VRR) has fallen to 14% industry-wide, the lowest level Murphy has ever recorded. 

Why it matters: Over the last 20 years, automakers that consistently launched the right vehicle, in the right segment, with the right powertrain, at the right time gained share and made money. Those that didn’t… well, there’s a reason Pontiac dealerships are hard to find these days.

As a result of these conditions, the MAPP has isolated 7 brands facing a serious reckoning. And although the exact brands haven’t been released yet, thankfully, speculation is free.

Here are the top 3 brands I think face the most risk:

The historic brand has seen an 80% collapse in U.S. sales from its peak. It currently relies almost entirely on a single model, the Pacifica minivan, leaving it with virtually no margin for error. With the Chrysler 300 gone and no other gas-powered vehicles left, the brand’s entire future hinges on a vague promise to go all-electric by 2028.

In one of the most drastic and risky strategies in modern automotive history, Jaguar discontinued almost its entire gas-powered lineup (leaving only the F-Pace SUV) to prepare for an ultra-premium, all-electric relaunch.

But Jaguar’s product timetable is severely out of sync with American consumer sentiment. And with U.S. sales cratering to historic lows of just 1,600 vehicles through mid-2026, the brand is entirely dependent on Land Rover's profits to survive its hilariously awful identity crisis. 

My bet: This brand will be sold to someone who can hopefully save it.

A luxury automotive brand requires a baseline level of volume to maintain consumer mindshare and justify local marketing budgets. Infiniti’s numbers have contracted to a level where the brand risks slipping into consumer irrelevance.

The reason: Infiniti eliminated its sedan and smaller crossover footprints (Q50, QX50, QX55). For over a year, dealerships have been forced to survive entirely on the QX60 three-row crossover and the flagship QX80 full-size SUV. Together, these vehicles sell ~52,000 units per year. But competitors like Acura outsell Infiniti at a 2.7-to-1 ratio, while Lexus moves hundreds of thousands of units. 

Still, Infiniti plans to expand its lineup to five core models by introducing one major new or completely refreshed vehicle annually.

Scott Pharr entered the car business in 1997, before he graduated from high school. Over the next 29 years, he worked his way from the sales floor into finance, management, and eventually multi-store leadership.

His experience is a reminder that dealer relations can materially affect a franchise’s momentum.

Now that he has that chance, Scott is using it to test a noticeably different retail model.

His store does not have a traditional F&I department. Instead of reaching an agreement with the salesperson and then waiting to be handed off to a finance manager, customers work with the same sales manager who helped structure the transaction.

The manager prints the paperwork and completes the transaction with the customer at the desk. Scott explains the process at the beginning so customers understand that financing remains available, but there will not be another person or department waiting for them at the end.

Removing that handoff is intended to shorten the transaction and make the numbers more transparent. The economic question is whether the store can convert the time saved and friction removed into a higher close rate and greater labor efficiency without sacrificing finance penetration or gross profit. 

It is much too early to answer that conclusively (Scott had owned the store for only three weeks when we spoke), but the initial results have been better than he expected. He said PVR (gross profit per vehicle retailed) was already “higher than I thought it was going to be.”

Ingenuity at the store level can compensate for weak product, but it’s difficult. Over the next five model years, the brands most likely to survive will be the ones that pair competitive vehicles with enough dealer trust to keep operators investing in facilities, people, inventory, and better ways to sell them. The manufacturers that lose either side of that equation risk entering a difficult cycle. 

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