Seven weeks ago, this series started with one number: the auction car grosses $542 less than the car you buy from your own customer. Six articles later, here is everything we measured, in one place.
The dataset: more than 620,000 transactions across roughly 100 rooftops over two full years. 250,677 trade-ins. 371,227 used retail sales. 86,349 lease maturities. Real DMS data, not survey answers.
The scoreboard
| Per unit | Customer-sourced | Auction lane |
|---|---|---|
| Retail gross (front + back) | $2,237 · lease returns $2,884 | $1,695 |
| Median days to retail | 21 | 33–39 |
| Reconditioning | $1,372 | $1,330 · a wash |
| Buy fee + transport | $0 | $500–$2,500 |
| Exit loss when it misses | −$50 | −$290 to −$494 |
| Head start | The customer-sourced car starts ~$2,500 ahead | |
Three lines worth taping to the wall
The recon difference between the lanes is $42. The rough-customer-car excuse doesn’t survive contact with a quarter million trade-ins. (Article 3)
Of every six trades you take, five come from strangers. The service drive converts 1.56% of its vehicles on its own, and 22.8% reply when someone actually makes an offer. (Article 2)
Lessees come back at 29%. Buyers come back at 12.5%, given three years. And the recaptured lease return is the single richest used car a store can retail. (Article 5)
The benchmarks
If you run a used department, these are the numbers to know for your own store. Share of retail inventory sourced from customers: the network average is 57%, and every point above it is fee-free inventory. Days to frontline by source. Offers per hundred repair orders. Reply rate on acquisition offers. Lease returns recaptured against leases maturing: the network captures 20.1%, and half the returns are never even seen.
Every one of those numbers is sitting in a database you already own. That’s been the point of this whole series: the cheapest, fastest, richest used cars aren’t at the sale on Thursday. They’re in your DMS, attached to customers who already know you.
Get the full report
We’ve packaged the complete dataset, the scoreboard, the five findings, and the operating benchmarks into a short report built for a used car manager’s attention span: skimmable in 90 seconds, provable in ten minutes.
It’s live now: The Known-Car Advantage — the interactive study. One picture of both roads to the frontline, with every number on it opening up to show the deeper cut and the article behind it.
The road ahead for used car acquisition is clear, and it starts in your own database. See the numbers on your store’s data: get a demo of VehicleLyfe.
The Known-Car Advantage series: 1. The Other 43% · 2. The Service Drive · 3. It’s Not the Recon · 4. The 12-Day Tax · 5. The Lease Return · 6. The Operating Model
All data: 250,677 trade-ins, 371,227 used retail sales, 86,349 lease maturities across roughly 100 rooftops, 2024–2025, matched same-store only. External auction fee and transport figures from published industry sources.
