When representatives of Wall Street financier George Soros told dealers in January at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention that the billionaire's family fund wanted to buy dealerships, it prompted a flurry of speculation that private-equity money and wealthy families' funds would open their fat wallets and inflate buy-sell prices. "What we're seeing is a cooling off of the M&A market in terms of private equity and family funds," says Mark Johnson, president of buy-sell advisory firm MD Johnson Inc. in Seattle.