By John Huetter
Automaker initiatives to shrink dealer networks contributed to the auto retail industry starting 2026 with fewer franchises, but with more dealerships dedicated to just a single brand.
The 2026 Automotive News dealer census, conducted by the Automotive News Research & Data Center, found 13,351 of the nation’s franchised dealerships sold just a single automaker’s brand as of Jan. 1, up 1.2 percent from a year earlier.
The total number of dealerships barely changed, however, with the industry’s 18,300 franchise stores just 11 fewer than a year earlier. Each of the Detroit 3 shed a small percentage of dealerships, while import-exclusive stores grew.
Altogether, automakers had 29,387 franchises within those dealerships as of Jan. 1, down 1.5percent from a year earlier.
This is the first year the census included franchise data for Ineos Automotive. The British retailer, which sells the Grenadier SUV and the Grenadier Quartermaster pickup,had 37 U.S. franchises to begin the year.
The census ranks 43 brands— though not yet Ineos—for throughput, a measure of dealership network health.
U.S. light-vehicle sales through franchises in 2025 rose 2.9 percent to 15.75 million vehicles from 15.3 million in 2024. The figures exclude sales by electric-vehicle brands BrightDrop, Fisker, Karma, Lucid, Rivian, Tesla and Ineos.
The average dealership franchise sold 532 vehicles in 2025, up 4.1 percent from a year earlier. Thirteen brands beat that average throughput, including four luxury companies: Lexus, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.
Throughput increased for 19 brandsand fell for 24 compared with 2024.
The top 10 brands for throughput held largely the same as in 2024, including No. 1 Toyota. Its throughput at 1,736 vehicles per store on average jumped 8 percent from 2024.
No. 2 Lexus kept its spot, and as did No. 3 Honda and No. 4 BMW. Subaru dropped from No. 5 to No. 7, while Kia and Hyundai rose from Nos. 6 and 7 to rank fifth and sixth, respectively.
Automakers planned on smaller dealer networks
Buick, Lincoln and Jaguar were among the brands with large declines in the size of their dealer networks — but all three have expected such reductions and even encouraged them.
Buick lost more than 180 locations, starting the year at 745 franchises, down 20 percent from a year earlier. The decrease stemmed from the continuation of Buick’s fall 2022 offer of buyouts to dealers who weren’t interested in Buick’s plan to go to an all-electric lineup, General Motors spokesperson Genna Young said Feb. 17.
“The program is now complete,” Young said. Buick has lost 62 percent — more than 1,200 locations — of the 1,963 franchises in the network at the start of 2022.
Lincoln had 430 franchises on Jan. 1, down 9.9 percent from a year earlier, but it’s in the midst of a multiyear push to reduce the number of dealers in its network. Lincoln President Joaquin Nuño-Whelan told Automotive News in January that the automaker sought to decrease its count by roughly 85 more stores in 2026.
The project, which has included buyouts, is expected to end in 2027 with Lincoln serving less than 300 franchise points — far below the 797 stores it had at the start of 2020.
“We’ve been on a journey to consolidate and right-size our retail network for the past years, really focusing on key luxury markets and our brand-exclusive facilities,” Lincoln spokesperson Anika Salceda-Wycoco wrote in a Feb. 12 email. This initiative has “increased our store throughput and improved profitability of the stores,” she wrote.
Fewer Lincoln and Buick locations have indeed contributed to significant gains in throughput with those brands. The average Buick dealership sold 237 vehicles in 2025, up 29 percent from a year earlier and the largest proportional gain of any nonexotic brand tracked by Automotive News. Lincoln dealerships averaged 235 vehicles per location, up 14 percent.
Another luxury brand, Jaguar, also saw its store count fall by a quarter from 2025. Jaguar dropped below 100 stores to 92, but JLR suggested this was expected and part of Jaguar’s transition to an ultraluxury brand.
“As part of the JLR Reimagine strategy announced in 2021, the Jaguar brand is being reinvented from a premium mass‑market lineup into an all‑electric luxury brand,” the company said in a Feb. 16 statement. “This shift brings a higher vehicle price point and volumes that align with the new positioning. Consequently, this brand transformation has resulted in a change to the size of the Jaguar retailer network.”
More GMC, Genesis dealerships exclusive to those brands
Other brands saw their overall network counts hold relatively steady but sport more standalone locations than a year earlier.
GMC offered more standalone locations in 2025, according to automotive marketing technology company Catalyst IQ of Ada, Mich., which provided standalone dealership counts for GM brands GMC, Buick and Chevrolet as of Feb. 4.
GMC lost seven stores to start 2026 with 1,652 franchises. But 298 of them are exclusive, also a 15 percent increase in single-point dealerships.
GM’s Young confirmed the number of GMC standalone stores has increased because of the Buick buyout program. What had been many Buick-GMC locations became GMC-only points after dealers dropped the Buick brand.
Luxury brand Genesis lost 13 dealerships in 2025 to start 2026 with 204 locations. But its network has shifted from less than a third of stores being Genesis-exclusive to 41 percent standalone. Genesis had 84 solo sites as of Jan. 1, up from 60 a year earlier.
Genesis dealers during the first half of the brand’s life shared a dealership with a sibling Hyundai franchise, but the automaker has been adding Genesis-dedicated facilities since 2022.
On Feb. 12, Genesis celebrated reaching 84 standalone sites after what it called the recent addition of nine solo locations. Eight were spun off joint Hyundai-Genesis dealerships, while the ninth, Genesis of Mountain View in California, is a new dealership altogether.
“At Genesis, we treat everyone as our ‘Son-nim,’ or honored guests, and that philosophy comes to life throughout our retail facilities,” Genesis Motor North America COO Tedros Mengiste said in a Feb. 12 statement accompanying the brand’s announcement of reaching 84 exclusives. “Our retail facilities are designed to feel warm and welcoming, and that focus helped drive our best-ever sales year in 2025.”