The vast majority of our readers are up to speed on the CDK ransomware attack, a cybersecurity incident which brought the software used by over 15,000 North American car dealerships to its knees. With second quarter sales numbers due out this week, speculation is running rampant about the effect it will have on the total number of deliveries reflected in official reports.

The CDK confab happened over two weeks ago, and the software company has yet to haul itself out of the gutter to present its customers anything even remotely resembling a working system. Keep in mind this is a package which fuels just about every corner of a dealership, from sales to service, meaning it has been a chaotic couple of weeks for certain stores. This author has spoken to numerous dealer principals and service managers off the record about the outage and it is safe to say there is a biblical amount of handwringing and gnashing of teeth.