For collision repair shops, two numbers in Cox Automotive's Aug. 31 report land directly on the cost side of the business: what shops pay to keep parts in stock, and what customers can afford to spend once a repair bill arrives.
In July, the cost of vehicle accessories and parts stood 6.6% above where it was a year earlier, the sharpest instance of parts inflation since March, according to Cox Automotive's Aug. 31 Auto Market Weekly Summary. The report, credited to Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jeremy Robb, also pointed to a shift in Federal Reserve policy signals that could keep vehicle financing rates elevated into the fall.
Parts and Repair Costs Outpace Vehicle Prices
A broader spending group in the report folds together public transit, vehicle leasing and what people spend keeping a vehicle running, and that combined figure rose 7.1% in July compared with a year earlier. Driving that total: a 17% jump in airfare, a 7% increase in mass transit fares, and a rise of just under 7% in vehicle maintenance and repair spending. The report did not break out a separate figure for vehicle leasing's contribution.
Vehicle prices themselves showed a smaller footprint. New models carried a modest 0.6% year-over-year increase, while buyers of used vehicles paid roughly 2% less than they would have a year earlier.
Fed Chairman Signals Inflation Fight Isn't Over
These figures come from the PCE price index, the inflation measure the report says the Fed weighs most heavily. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, marking 100 days in the role, used his debut address at the central bank's Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming on Friday to focus on inflation.
The report characterized Warsh's message as holding firm on the Fed's 2% target, while acknowledging that underlying inflation has improved only modestly even as recent data outperformed expectations. Warsh also described current financial conditions as difficult to call restrictive, a judgment the report said opened the door to further rate increases beyond what markets had expected heading into the speech.
Separately, Warsh pointed to a different growth measure, called variously "private domestic final purchases" and "final sales to private domestic purchasers" in different parts of the report, as more informative than headline economic output; that figure was revised up to 4.2% for the second quarter from an earlier 3.9%, well above the 1.5% headline growth rate for the same period.
New and used vehicle buyers experienced August's borrowing environment differently. Nearly every credit tier saw new-vehicle loan rates tick upward, the report found, while used-vehicle borrowing costs showed little change from the prior month. Robb's report read that gap as a sign the recent rate pressure has not yet filtered into used-vehicle financing.
A Longer-Running Trend for Shops
The July figures add to a theme Robb raised at Cox Automotive's Q2 2026 Mid-Year Review on June 24, a separate presentation built on Consumer Price Index data rather than the PCE figures cited above. There, Robb identified vehicle maintenance and repair, insurance and public transportation as a combined group CPI classifies as transportation services, putting its share of total U.S. inflation over the prior five years at roughly 11%, second only to housing costs, according to Cox Automotive's own presentation script; Autobody News also reported the 11% figure.
Robb linked most of that five-year share to the additional time and specialized labor vehicle repairs now require. Looking at just the past 12 months, he put that same group's inflation share closer to 6%, attributing the shift mainly to climbing transit fares rather than repair costs; auto insurance prices, he noted separately, had actually fallen 2% over that span.
New and used vehicle prices, together with parts and equipment, made up only about 3% of the five-year inflation total in Robb's presentation and had turned negative over the past year.
