When a car sells at auction and a dealer then offers the same VIN, both prices are public. Ledger measures the gap and grades it against every other dealer we can measure. It is a measure of price, not of conduct.
Each grade is the median gap between a dealer’s asking price and the auction result for the same car. The blue tick on each bar marks the market median of +21.9%. Open any dealer to see every car behind its grade.
Only auctions from the last 365 days count. A car that sold years ago and is offered today has gained value with the market, and calling that gap a dealer’s margin would be wrong — it is the difference between two grades in practice. 35 cars were excluded on that rule.
| D | Ryan Friedman Motor Cars 5 cars measured · well above the market band | +47.8% | |
| C | Earth MotorCars 4 cars measured · above the market band | +37.8% | |
| C | Grand Prix Motorcars 4 cars measured · above the market band | +33.9% | |
| C | Twin Cities Performance 3 cars measured · above the market band | +25.1% | |
| B | EUROCAR 11 cars measured · within the market band | +24.8% | |
| B | Chicago Motor Cars 3 cars measured · within the market band | +23.9% | |
| B | Motor Cars of Chicago 14 cars measured · within the market band | +14.9% |
27 further dealers appear in the record with fewer than 3 measurable cars. They are listed as not rated rather than graded — too little data is not a bad result.
An asking price is not a sale. Dealers discount, and we see the ask, not the deal. A high spread means a high ask and nothing more.
Real costs sit inside the gap. Reconditioning, transport, warranty, floorplan interest and staff are invisible to us and are genuinely expensive. Some of every spread is cost, not margin.
Nobody is accused of anything here. Ledger reports public prices and the arithmetic between them. It makes no claim about any business’s honesty, and a dealer who thinks a row is wrong can dispute it.