Notes on the CARS Act, written for the finance office.
Short pieces on what California’s SB 766 actually requires and what each requirement changes in the back office. Where a widely circulated summary has it wrong, we say so and say why — getting a date or a figure wrong on a compliance page is expensive for whoever acts on it.
Two years of CARS Act records
What has to be kept, which of the five categories are produced by systems nobody thinks of as compliance systems, and why failing to keep the records is a violation on its own.
The three-day right to cancel
It replaces the 2006 paid cancellation option rather than adding to it. What changed, how the three calendar days are counted, and what has to exist in the store before the first buyer comes back.
The CARS Act is not the FTC’s CARS Rule
The federal rule was vacated in 2025 and withdrawn in 2026. Four pieces of its vocabulary keep appearing in California readiness material as requirements — including one that costs real F&I time to implement.
Start with the overview
If you are new to SB 766, the readiness page covers the whole statute in one pass — total price, add-ons, the cancellation window, retention, and the two other 2026 changes landing on the same back office — and answers the questions dealers ask us most often.
Want to know where your stores actually stand?
A short conversation is usually enough to tell whether you have a documentation problem, a process problem, or neither.