21.7 million vehicles were recalled this year, and there's a lot your shop can learn from Rolex, gun stores, and a deli counter about why.
New vehicle recalls have roughly doubled: 21.7 million vehicles were recalled industry-wide in the first half of 2026, up from 10.7 million over the same period the year before. Justin and Jamie dig into what’s actually driving the spike — software rushed to market before it’s ready, OTA updates patching problems after the fact, and new vehicles effectively turning owners into unpaid beta testers.
The story that kicks off the episode: Jamie’s own truck got bricked days before its warranty ran out, and had to be towed. It becomes a real-world case study in what good (and bad) dealership customer service looks like when something goes wrong on the manufacturer’s end, not the shop’s.
A shift in the exotic and collector car market: pricing and demand patterns are settling back toward pre-pandemic norms after several volatile years, and what that signals for shops and dealers who built strategy around the COVID-era boom.
The back half of the episode steps outside automotive entirely, pulling three lessons from industries that look nothing like the aftermarket on the surface.
Watches — managing scarcity without losing customers. Rolex and Omega have built entire brand identities around waitlists and controlled supply. Justin and Jamie unpack how that scarcity is managed deliberately rather than accidental, and where the line is between “exclusive” and “frustrating” for a customer.
Firearms — branding and hype over engineering. Brands like Not Just Guns and the 2011 pistol platform show how much of the firearms market runs on branding and community hype rather than pure spec sheets. The conversation also covers the risk of building a business on a platform you don’t own, after discussing shadow-banning issues that gun-adjacent brands face on mainstream social platforms.
Grocery — the deli meat lesson. When one grocery chain dropped Boar’s Head from its deli counter, it didn’t just lose deli sales — it lost 40% of total store revenue. The takeaway for shops: a single product or service line can be quietly propping up sales across the whole business, and cutting it without understanding why customers come in can be far more expensive than it looks on paper.
A practical breakdown of marketing a brand across the Woodward Dream Cruise — a 13-mile, two-week event rather than a single show day. They cover billboard placement, local TV and radio buys, and how to stretch a single activation across the full run of the event instead of just cruise day itself.
The episode closes on new business development: how referral-based growth actually works in this industry, and why having a clear, specific, fast answer to “what do you actually do” outperforms trying to signal that you “do everything” for everyone.
Built for shop owners, operators, builders, and brand leaders who take this industry seriously. Every episode explores growth, leadership, strategy, and what it actually takes to build a lasting automotive business.
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