The 2026 Dealer Reality Check with Inga Maurer (NADA26)

The David Spisak Show

The David Spisak Show
The 2026 Dealer Reality Check with Inga Maurer (NADA26)
Feb 19, 2026
David Spisak

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, McKinsey Senior Partner 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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