Written by Chris Petrawski, President, Bedford Advertising
Texas titled 112,397 new vehicles in July. If you stopped at that number, you would conclude the market cooled about 3 percent from June and everyone shrank a little together. Almost nothing about that conclusion survives contact with the retail data. Underneath a shrinking market, real share changed hands. One brand added more than a full point of retail share in thirty days. Another posted a double-digit retail gain while its headline total looked like a 10 percent decline. And the state’s second-best-selling brand is not who the leaderboard says it is.
How We Read the Numbers
Every figure in this review comes from verified state title registration data, which records what actually got titled rather than what a vendor dashboard reports. We analyze retail units only, with fleet stripped out. Fleet units are commercial, rental, and government purchases. They inflate a brand’s totals, but no advertising dollar wins or loses them. Because of this, they have no place in a scoreboard built for dealers.
The market cooled. Share still changed hands.
- -2.7% TX retail units, Jul vs Jun
- 94,681 Retail units titled in July
- +1.22 pts Largest share gain (Tesla)
Retail volume fell from 97,312 units in June to 94,681 in July. When the market tightens, it is natural for a store to look at a softer month and blame the economy. The share chart says otherwise. Tesla, Kia, Volkswagen, Buick, and Chrysler all grew retail share while the market shrank. Toyota gave back three quarters of a point and still holds a commanding lead at 16 percent. Jeep took the hardest volume hit among major brands, down 21.6 percent in retail units month over month.
When share moves like this, the instinct is to ask why. Market share does not shift by accident, and it does not shift because of interest rates alone. It shifts because of the decisions made at the desk. The inventory you fought for, the sales processes your team executes, and the advertising dollars you deployed all play a role. We cover the full model in the four factors that drive market share growth. That framework explains how a store makes share move on purpose.
Retail market share change by brand
Jun to Jul 2026 · change in retail market share, percentage points
Share of total retail market. Denominators: 97,312 retail units in Jun 2026; 94,681 in Jul 2026.
Bedford Advertising · Driving Sales Since 1980
(Chart 1: Change in share of Texas retail titles, July 2026 vs June 2026. Brands above 1% retail share shown. Source: state title registration data.)
Rank versus reality: the Ford illusion
On the total leaderboard, Ford’s 13,490 July titles rank second in Texas, sitting ahead of Chevrolet. Strip out fleet and the picture inverts. Nearly 40 percent of Ford’s July volume, 5,381 units, was fleet. This includes commercial trucks, work vans, and government buys. On retail units alone, Ford falls to fourth behind Toyota, Chevrolet, and Honda. Honda ran the opposite play, with just 1.4 percent of its volume in fleet. Almost every Honda titled in July was a retail customer some dealer’s advertising had to win.