The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated changes in automotive retailing, but it also helped dramatize the need for collaboration between dealers and manufacturers hoping to boost their brands. Jessica Stafford, senior vice president of Cox Automotive, noted there was a dramatic shift in consumer expectation and perceptions in the first year of the pandemic. The shift compressed what might have been a decade of incremental changes into a single year, noted Stafford during a panel discussion on cooperation among dealers organized by Detroit’s Automotive Press Association. 

Automotive Ventures raised $13 million for a new fund backed by dealerships hoping to invest in novel technology that could help them do their jobs better. The firm's DealerFund is much smaller than originally intended, however. When fundraising began more than a year ago, the goal had been to raise as much as $50 million. The fund closed in April.