NADA cheers bill provision impacting CARS Rule implementation
The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) had something to celebrate last week on Capitol Hill.
NADA explained that what triggered the cheers was the passage of the fiscal year 2025 Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) appropriations bill by the House FSGG Appropriations Subcommittee.
The association said that included in the funding bill is a provision that would stop the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from implementing or enforcing the Vehicle Shopping Rule (also known as the CARS Rule) until Sept. 30, 2025.
NADA recapped that the rule, finalized at the end of 2023, would require dealers to provide an extensive series of “unnecessary written and oral disclosures when communicating with consumers related to the vehicle sales price, certain credit terms, and voluntary protection products (VPPs).”
According to a new, independent study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), the FTC’s final Vehicle Shopping Rule will increase costs by $24.1 billion over 10 years, which consumers and small business dealers will have to absorb.
Overall, the study found that the mandates of the rule would add 60 to 80 minutes to the car-buying process and cost consumers $1.3 billion per year in lost time.
“NADA and the nation’s 16,000 franchised new car dealerships strongly support the Committee’s advancement of this legislation, which will stop the FTC’s disastrous Vehicle Shopping Rule from taking effect,” NADA president and CEO Mike Stanton said in a news release. “This flawed rule would upend the sales process for consumers and small businesses, and CAR’s independent analysis, showing the rule would add at least an hour to every vehicle transaction, is just further proof that the FTC got their economic analysis completely wrong.
“Either through the courts or Congress, this rule needs to be stopped before it wreaks havoc on consumers and the entire car-buying and car-shopping process,” Stanton added.