In today's issue:

Scarcity is the product. A field that reads like a bubble from the outside is, on the account of someone who has watched it for more than three decades, a supply problem wearing a tuxedo. The cars on the lawn Friday are not competing for buyers so much as rationing themselves to them.

A $20,000 Budget Used to Buy Half the Used Market. Now It Buys 11.5% of It.: Cars under $20,000 made up 11.5% of three-year-old used vehicles in 2025, down from 49.3% in 2019, per an iSeeCars study of more than 2.6 million cars cited by CBT News. The average three-year-old used car now runs $32,635, up 40.9% from $23,159. The share of three-year-old Honda Civics under $20,000 fell from 97.6% to 5.7%, and Toyota Camrys from 96.7% to 8.3%. "The pandemic may be a fading memory, but the lack of new car production five years ago has created a 'pandemic hangover' effect for today's used car market," iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer said in the study. #market

GM Signed 20 More Years in China. Chevrolet Won't Be Part of It.: GM and SAIC extended their joint venture through 2047, with at least 30 new energy vehicles planned by 2030, per CBT News. Days later, Chevrolet is reportedly ending sales in China after nearly 21 years, its volume down from more than 767,000 units in 2014 to under 9,000 last year, per Carscoops citing Automobilwoche. GM-SAIC will keep building Chevrolets there, but for export markets. #analyst

US New-Vehicle Inventory Barely Budges: Inventory sat at 2.94 million vehicles to start August, down just 10,000 from a month earlier, per Automotive News. #market

Hyundai Plans 36 New or Overhauled Models in a $26 Billion Push: Hyundai CEO Jose Muñoz is targeting what Automotive News calls the brand's most critical US stretch since its 1986 launch, pushing into new segments as it tries to convert July sales momentum into share gains. #analyst

A Construction Equipment Company Just Beat Everyone to a Hydrogen Speed Record: JCB's 1,597-hp Hydromax averaged 406.320 mph across two runs at Bonneville, driven by Andy Green, the same man who broke the sound barrier in ThrustSSC in 1997, per Carscoops and AutoCar UK. It's a provisional FIA world record for hydrogen combustion.

Jaguar's Production EV Interior Ditches the Big Screen for Buttons: The Type 01's cabin runs a central spine the length of the car and leans on hidden tech instead of a dashboard screen, per Automotive News Europe, with full reveal set for October 6 in New York, per Carscoops.

Cadillac Will Charge You $54,995 for a Custom Paint Job: Cadillac's Curated by Cadillac program now covers the Escalade IQ, offering more than 160 exterior colors and 44 interior trims hand-assembled at its Artisan Center, per Carscoops, pushing a fully loaded build to $206,095, per americancarsandracing.com.

Toyota Recalls 508,354 Camrys Over Clusters That Boot Up Blank: The 7-inch instrument cluster in 2025-2026 Camrys can come up completely blank at startup, taking turn signals and warning buzzers with it, per Car and Driver and Carscoops. Reports first reached Toyota in July 2024, so the fix arrives roughly two years after the company first heard about it. Canada adds another 11,159 cars, per Driving.ca. → If you own one: Only the LE, SE and Nightshade trims use the 7-inch display; XLE and XSE run the 12.3-inch unit and are not affected, per Autoblog. The remedy is a free software update, per CBT News.

McLaren Hires a Ford and Nissan Design Vet as Chief Creative Officer: David Woodhouse will oversee all of McLaren's design as the brand keeps reshaping leadership after its 2024 ownership change, per Automotive News Europe.

Hyundai's Valet Robots Squeeze 50% More Cars Into a Garage: The pilot program uses robots to park cars closer together than a human driver would risk, boosting garage capacity by 20-50%, per Carscoops.

The 2027 F-150 Gets a Bigger Base Engine and More V8s Higher Up: A dealer order guide shows a 3.0L twin-turbo V6 replacing the 2.7L EcoBoost as the F-150's base engine, with the 5.0L V8 becoming available on King Ranch and Platinum, per Motor Illustrated. Ford has not disclosed output for either application.

Yesterday's picks

Tesla Recalls 20,349 Cars for Headlights That Are Too Bright: The low beams throw too much light into the upper corners of the beam pattern, breaking federal standards and raising glare risk for oncoming drivers, per Autoblog. Tesla filed the recall on August 4 as NHTSA campaign 26V507, named Marelli as the lighting supplier, and has not settled on a repair. → If you own one: Affected cars are 2017-2023 Model 3s and 2020-2023 Model Ys carrying headlamps built on or after June 2, 2023. Recall letters go out in phases from mid-September, and there is no fix to book yet.

GM Sells Its Half of a Battery Plant That Never Got Its Machinery: GM will sell its 49.99% stake in the SynergyCells joint venture to Samsung SDI, handing over a $3.5 billion New Carlisle, Indiana site that has a finished building and no production equipment in it, per Automotive News and Electrek. Samsung SDI will initially focus on energy-storage cells there rather than the EV cells the plant was drawn up for, per just-auto, and separately the two agreed to jointly develop next-generation prismatic EV batteries for GM's future lineup. The 1,600 jobs the site was meant to create are still a plan, not a payroll. We wrote up the writedown that started this retreat when GM brought back gas Cadillacs.

Truck Prices Actually Fell in July: Bestselling truck transaction prices dropped 1.8%, or $1,035, in July as truck incentives rose 30% and car incentives climbed 17% from June, per CBT News citing CDK. It's the first monthly decline for bestselling cars since February.

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