Digital Dealer is partnering with Car Dealership Guy for the 2026 event in a first for both brands. The goal is to help create an event focused on what dealerships need most: practical education, honest conversations, and ideas you can put into action back at the dealership.
Some of the best ideas in this industry come from dealer-led sessions built on real strategies you can apply Monday morning. Others come from conversations with another dealer solving the same challenges you are. Car Dealership Guy × Digital Dealer 2026 bring both together, strengthening an agenda already built around your operations.
Digital Dealer had the pleasure of talking to Jay Law, CDG’s Head of Partnerships, to learn more about the collaboration, what CDG has in store for the event on September 22-23 in Detroit and more!
1. Why did CDG choose to partner with Digital Dealer?
Jay Law: We don’t think the industry needs another conference. There are already great events bringing the industry together, and we’d rather partner with one of them and help make it even more valuable for dealers.
Digital Dealer has been doing that for years. We saw an opportunity to bring CDG’s audience, content, community and dealer relationships together with what Digital Dealer has already built. The goal is simple: create more reasons for dealers to attend, more valuable conversations while they’re there, and more value they can take back to their stores.
2. What new voices are you excited to hear from at the event?
Law: We’re always most excited about hearing directly from the people actually operating dealerships and solving problems every day.
Some of the best ideas in automotive aren’t coming from the biggest names or the biggest stages. They’re coming from GMs, department leaders, emerging dealer executives and operators who are testing new technology, changing processes and figuring out what actually works. We want to help bring more of those voices into the conversation.
3. Looking at current trends, what are some of the biggest stories you’re keeping an eye on in automotive in 2026 and beyond? How can DD help dealers stay ahead?
Law: AI has obviously been a massive movement the past few years, but the bigger question is how it actually changes the economics and operations of a dealership. Where does it create real efficiency? What jobs and workflows change? Which technology actually delivers results versus simply having “AI” in the pitch?
Beyond that, we’re watching affordability, dealership consolidation, changing consumer behavior, margin pressure and the continued evolution of how dealers acquire and retain customers.
That’s where an event like Digital Dealer can be incredibly valuable. Dealers can get beyond the headlines and hear directly from other operators about what they’re actually seeing, testing and implementing. The value isn’t knowing what the trends are. It’s understanding what you should do about them.
4. What does CDG have planned for this year’s event, and what can you tell us about the keynote?
Law: We’re going to be very active throughout Digital Dealer. CDG will deliver the keynote, host several educational sessions, broadcast Daily Dealer Live directly from the expo hall, and host a dealer breakfast Wednesday morning featuring Yossi Levi, The Car Dealership Guy, Steve Greenfield and other industry leaders.
For the keynote, Sam D’Arc and Glenn Lundy will take the stage for a high-energy, candid conversation focused on what’s happening in automotive right now and what dealers need to be thinking about next.
More broadly, we want to bring the CDG experience to Digital Dealer – great operators, candid conversations, useful insights and formats that encourage participation rather than just sitting in a room listening to another presentation.
5. Why are in-person events still important? Why Detroit?
Law: I actually think in-person interaction is becoming more important because everything else is becoming more digital.
We communicate through screens, consume more content remotely, and AI is going to automate even more of how we work and communicate. That makes being in the same room with someone increasingly valuable. Relationships, trust and the spontaneous conversations that happen over breakfast, between sessions or after an event are difficult to recreate digitally.
And Detroit is the perfect backdrop. It’s hard to think of another city with a deeper connection to the history, present and future of the automotive industry. Bringing dealers, technology companies, OEMs and industry leaders together there feels very fitting.
6. What are you most excited about for Digital Dealer 2026? What are your “can’t miss” items?
Law: The CDG keynote with Glenn Lundy and Sam D’Arc is obviously at the top of our list, but what I’m most excited about is everything around it.
The best conference experiences usually aren’t one session. They’re the combination of a great conversation on stage, meeting someone in the hallway, sitting down with another dealer, seeing a new technology firsthand and leaving with two or three ideas or relationships that actually change something when you get home.
That’s ultimately what we want this partnership to help create: fewer passive conference moments and more interactions that dealers remember and act on.
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