The Texas Market Review | July 2026

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.

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.

(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.

(Chart 2: July 2026 Texas titles split into retail and fleet. Retail ranking: Toyota, Chevrolet, Honda, Ford. Source: state title registration data.)

If you compete against Ford, measuring your team against their inflated corporate fleet numbers is a recipe for burnout and bad budget decisions. The only fair fight is retail against retail. It is the same reason the buyer’s real journey matters more than the topline. Cox Automotive research finds the typical shopper visits only two dealerships before buying. The store that wins is the one measuring the right contest and reaching the buyer inside it.

The Kia illusion: when a “decline” is actually growth

Kia’s July total fell 10.2 percent from June. If you are competing with Kia, it is human nature to look at that drop and feel a sense of relief. Any GM glancing at the topline would file Kia under brands losing steam. The retail number tells a much more dangerous story. Kia retail units grew 11.2 percent, marking the second-largest retail gain of any volume brand. They also added nearly three quarters of a point of retail share.

The gap between those two readings is fleet. Kia’s June fleet count was 1,364 units; in July it was 154. The June surge was concentrated almost entirely in one model, the Niro. The title data shows nearly all of those units registered from outside the local trade area. This is the signature of a large single-buyer fleet transaction rather than real showroom demand.

(Chart 3: Same brand, same months, opposite conclusions. A 1,200-unit June fleet swing masked a genuine retail gain. Source: state title registration data.)

Models moving metal

At the model level, July’s retail growth concentrated in two places: Tesla’s lineup and value-priced entries. The Model 3 nearly doubled its retail count from 661 units to 1,247. The Model Y added 381 retail units to reach 3,417, sitting third among all models in the state. On the value end, the Nissan Kicks and Nissan Frontier each grew about 25 percent while their stablemates Rogue, Sentra, and Altima softened. That is a shift inside Nissan’s own showroom worth watching. Among the losers, Toyota’s core nameplates all pulled back at once. The Camry, Corolla, Tacoma, and 4Runner each gave up 5 to 9 percent of their June retail volume.

(Chart 4: Retail units only, models above 600 July retail units, trim segments combined per nameplate. Model figures are drawn from the trade-area title dataset, a slightly different geographic scope than the statewide brand totals in Charts 1 through 3, so the two should not be added together. Source: state title registration data.)

Three things worth watching into August

• Tesla’s share climb. Tesla added 1,054 retail units in a month when the whole Texas retail market shrank by 2,631. That is a 29.2 percent retail jump and 1.22 points of share in thirty days. One month is not a trend, so we will not assign a cause here. If it holds in August, every franchise dealer’s conquest math changes. The question to ask is which of the four market share factors is doing the work.
• Pickups holding ground in a soft market. Full-size pickup share of the total market rose from 16.9 to 17.7 percent even as overall volume fell. When Texans pull back, they pull back on cars before trucks. That is an inventory and creative signal, the first two levers most stores already respect.
• The Toyota pullback. Toyota is still nearly five points clear of the field, but every core nameplate softened in the same month. One month is noise. Two would be a trend, and a rare conquest window against the state’s dominant brand for any store working its actual missed buyer rather than the OEM’s national average.

Statewide numbers set the context, but the real battle is fought in your backyard. As a Dealer Principal or General Manager, the weight of the store’s monthly performance rests squarely on your shoulders. If you are grading your team against fleet-stuffed toplines or distorted vendor dashboards, you are fighting a ghost. It is exhausting trying to fix a problem that might not even exist. The exact same fleet noise hiding in the Texas data is likely blurring your own local market reports. You cannot make the right adjustments if you are looking at the wrong scoreboard. Pull your true, localized retail share for June and July. When you strip away the corporate noise and see exactly which real buyers you won and which you lost, the frustration of a soft market drops away. You stop guessing, and you gain the absolute clarity you need to pivot your advertising and go win August.

The Texas Market Review publishes monthly on the Automotive Advertising Academy. All figures derived from verified state title registration data, retail units unless noted.

Chris Petrawski

President, Head of Ad Strategy at Bedford Advertising

Chris Petrawski is President of Bedford Advertising, a Dallas-Fort Worth agency specializing in automotive marketing for franchise dealerships. He holds a BSBA in Marketing Management from the University of Arkansas and an MS in Marketing from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Over a career spanning retail, automotive, and higher education, Chris has managed more than $500 million in advertising spend. His campaigns have earned a Gold Medal in the Educational Advertising Awards, multiple ADDY Awards, and a Best in Show TELLY Award, and his work has been featured by Facebook, Instagram, and the American Advertising Federation (AAF).

Chris also volunteers with Genesis Women’s Shelter, where he manages their Google Ads grant — work that earned him 1st Place in the AAF National Public Service Awards. In 2018, Ad 2 Dallas named him to its 32 Under 32, recognizing the top marketing and advertising professionals in DFW.

Since becoming President of Bedford Advertising in 2022, Chris has led franchise dealerships across the country in maximizing sales growth and profitability.