The Texas Market Review | September 2026

Contributed by Chris Petrawski, President, Bedford Advertising.

In last month’s review, Texas titled fewer new vehicles in July than in June, and the point was that share still changes hands inside a shrinking market. August flipped the script. Texas buyers titled 137,888 new retail vehicles in August, up 29.5% from July’s 106,458. The used side ran even hotter: 236,251 retail titles, up almost 40%.

When every book on the lot grows by a third in a single month, the reflex on the floor is to take the win and move on. Most Texas stores had a strong August. The problem is that strong is relative. A rooftop that grew 20% in a market that grew 30% did not have a good month. It lost ground to every competitor in its geos, and the sales board never said so. That is the best sales month trap, and a 30% month is the easiest place in the year to fall into it.

All figures in this review are retail titles only. Fleet units, which are commercial, government, and rental purchases no dealer advertised for, are excluded so the numbers reflect buyers a store can actually compete for. Fleet added another 17,624 new titles in August, and as the July review showed, leaving it in rewrites the brand standings.

The share went somewhere else

Toyota, Ford, and Chevrolet own close to 40% of Texas new vehicle retail between them. All three grew in August. All three lost share. Toyota grew 26% and slipped from 15.5% to 15.2% of the market. Ford grew 22% and fell from 12.6% to 11.8%. Chevrolet grew 23% and moved from 11.6% to 11.0%. Together, the three largest brands in the state gave up 1.7 points of share in one month while posting their best unit totals of the summer.

Most of that share landed in one place. Tesla went from 4,906 retail titles in July to 8,447 in August, a 72% jump that lifted its share from 4.6% to 6.1%. Nearly all of it was Model Y, which went from 3,417 to 6,392 units, up 87%. That makes Model Y the highest volume retail nameplate in Texas for August, ahead of the F-150 at 5,249 and the Silverado 1500 at 4,523. Add fleet back in and the F-150 reclaims the top spot by a little more than a hundred units, which is the same fleet illusion we covered last month, running the other direction.

Model Y overtook the F-150 in Texas retail titles in August. Tesla has no franchised dealer, so every one of those buyers lives in geos a franchise store advertises in.

The rest of the share gain was spread across brands that simply grew faster than the market: Hyundai up 39%, Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram up 36% with the Ram 1500 up 45%, Nissan up 35% on the back of a 61% jump in Sentra, Kia up 33%, and Buick up 46% as Envista climbed from 727 to 1,073 units. Share does not move by accident. It moves on inventory, process, and the advertising decisions made at the desk, which is the full model behind the four factors that drive market share growth.

Model movers against a 29.5% increase

The useful comparison for any model this month is not last month’s number. It is the market’s growth rate. A model that titled exactly as many units in August as it did in July gave up roughly 23% of its share, because everyone around it grew by nearly a third.

The fast movers were led by two Toyota nameplates and a Kia. Corolla Hybrid went from 172 to 449 retail titles, up 161%, while the gas Corolla sat almost flat at 1,393 to 1,421. Land Cruiser went from 207 to 508. Seltos more than doubled, from 326 to 686. Behind them: Ranger up 70%, Tucson up 65%, Sentra up 61%, Santa Fe up 56%, Trailblazer up 55%, Explorer up 53%, and 4Runner up 48%.

The slow side is where a store should look hardest, because these are volume nameplates that did not ride the wave. Escape fell 15% in a market up 30%. Expedition fell 11%, Grand Highlander fell 11%, the gas Palisade fell 9%, and Bronco Sport fell 7%. Corolla, Grand Cherokee, Corolla Cross, and Bronco all grew in single digits, which in August means they trailed the market by 20 points or more. If one of these is a core model on your lot, the question is whether your geos looked like the state or looked different. The manufacturer’s playbook is built for a national average buyer, and a statewide table is closer to that average than it is to your backyard. Only your own market data settles it.

The fleet footnote

Two reminders that fleet keeps distorting brand-level headlines. The Nissan Altima titled 132 retail units in Texas in August against 381 fleet units, so roughly three of every four new Altimas on the road this month were not bought by a retail customer. And Hyundai’s soft-looking July was largely a fleet artifact: the Tucson carried 423 fleet units in July and 59 in August, while its retail titles went from 727 to 1,200. Anyone who read Hyundai’s July as weakness read the wrong column.

The used book: 1.7 times the size of new, and far more stable

Texas titled 236,251 used retail vehicles in August against 137,888 new. That is 1.7 used for every new, and the ratio widened from 1.6 in July. It also runs ahead of the national picture, where Cox Automotive forecasts 20.3 million used retail sales against 13.1 million new retail for 2026, closer to 1.6 to 1. On the top nameplates the Texas gap is starker still. For every new F-150 titled in the state in August, buyers titled two used ones.

The other difference from new is how little the used standings move. Ford leads the used book at 13.7% share, then Chevrolet at 12.7%, Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram combined at 11.5%, Toyota at 10.6%, and Nissan at 7.7%. Not one of the top ten used brands moved more than three tenths of a point in August. Nissan is worth a second look: it is the number one brand in used cars specifically, and Altima, Rogue, and Sentra each titled more than 3,000 used units in the month.

Age is the other story in used. Half of all used titles in Texas in August, 50.2%, were model year 2020 or older. That is the part of the used market most franchise stores rarely stock. On the newer end, 2024 and 2025 model years grew from 20.9% to 22.6% of used titles, and a few nameplates are arriving on used lots in real volume before their second birthday. Used 2025 Chevrolet Trax went from 490 titles in July to 772 in August. Used Model Y went from 978 to 1,270, and 137 of those were 2026 model year vehicles.

What you can do for your store

This review does not try to explain why a brand or model moved, because the cause of a share shift is different in every market and I have written separately about the four factors that drive market share growth. What the August data does is set the bar. Three things worth doing this week:

• Pull your own August against July by model, in your geos, and put the market’s 29.5% next to it. Any model that grew less than that lost share in your backyard, whatever the sales board said.
• If you are a Toyota, Ford, or Chevrolet store, find out where your August share went. Statewide, most of it went to a brand with no franchised dealer and no lot. Your geos may tell a different story, but you will not know until you look.
• On the used side, know your new-to-used ratio. The state runs 1.7 to 1 and the top nameplates run 2 to 1. If your used department is not carrying its share of that, the buyers are there. They are just titling somewhere else.

Next month’s review will cover September, which brings Labor Day events and model-year closeouts arriving in the same four weeks. It is the most promotionally concentrated month on the calendar and the one where every same-brand store in a market runs the same offer on the same dates, which is the category trap at its worst. It is also the month when the urge to counter a competitor’s event two weeks late is strongest, and reacting is always late.

Methodology: All figures are drawn from verified state title registration data for vehicles titled in Texas during July and August 2026. Retail titles only; fleet is excluded throughout unless noted. Share is each brand’s percentage of total Texas retail titles for the month. Models offered in more than one body style are combined into a single nameplate total. Stellantis brands (Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram) are reported as one line. Used model-year percentages are calculated on all used titles, retail and fleet. July figures reflect the most recent data refresh and may differ slightly from figures published in the July review, as title records continue to post after a month closes.

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.