Good morning! It’s Wednesday, July 8, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, Ram is helping it break a seven-year sales downturn at Stellantis, GM’s Chinese sales are in free fall, Washington state car dealers are suing over Scout’s direct sales model and Honda is recalling over 325,000 Odyssey because the damn rearview cameras aren’t working — proving your boomer uncle right.

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The Ram 1500 is so hot right now — pulling Stellantis to its fourth quarterly sales gain despite the fact that many of its other key nameplates are going through a bit of a shaky stretch. The Jeep Grand Cherokee, Compass, Wrangler, Gladiator and Dodge Durango all posted lower sales in the second quarter of 2026. Hell, the Ford Bronco even outsold the Jeep Wrangler for the first time in a quarter since its reintroduction, but the Ram 1500 sold so well that it didn’t matter.

Sales of the flagship light-duty pickup truck rose 27% in the second quarter, keeping the automaker on pace to reverse a streak of seven consecutive years of sales declines. Total deliveries for Stellantis actually managed to rise 6% overall in the first half of the year. To keep the good times rolling, the company is throwing cash on the hood like its going out of style. Buyers can apparently save up to $20,000 on a loaded Ram 1500 if they play their cards right. From Automotive News:

In the pickup-heavy Texas market, Payne Edinburg Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram is moving Rams at a fast clip.

The dealership already was close to surpassing its June Ram sales in the first week of July, said Adrian Gonzalez, the general manager.

Gonzalez attributed the sales rush to rebates that began July 1 and increase as a truck’s price tag rises.

The line-topping Tungsten trim, which starts at nearly $92,000 including shipping, is available with a 15 percent rebate, Gonzalez said. Packaged with other dealer discounts, consumers can get about $20,000 off of Ram’s most luxurious pickup, he said.

“That fixes a big issue,” Gonzalez said. “Now you bring a vehicle that’s $90,000 to a little bit more of an affordable price range, which is going to incentivize a lot of people to jump into these higher trim vehicles.”

[…]

Wrangler sales slipped 12 percent in the second quarter, to 41,793, while the Bronco rose 16 percent, to 45,739.

Enhanced Wrangler incentives should make that a temporary reordering of the off-road utility space, Hogan said.

Theoretically, there’s a lot of exciting stuff on the way from Stellantis in the coming few years. The automaker recently laid out its ambitious five-year plan that called for 35% higher sales in North America and 25% more revenue. To do so, it would introduce 11 all-new vehicles by 2030, and many of them would cost under $40,000.

General Motors can’t seem to get anything going in China. It just extended its sales slide in China to a second-straight quarter, falling 20% to 357,000 vehicles as the automaker struggles to turn its fortunes around in the world’s largest automotive market. The misfortune comes despite the fact its launched new electrified models for the country that we don’t even get over here thatnks to a couple of partnerships it has with SAIC Motor Corp.

GM’s sales in China have now contracted year-on-year for three consecutive quarter. In the last quarter of 2025, GM’s China deliveries dropped 3.6% to 540,000 vehicles. In the first quarter of 2026, the number collapsed 21% to 350,000 vehicles. From Automotive News:

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