Trade News

Sonic Automotive Inc. made its first franchised dealership acquisition in nearly seven years on Monday when it bought two Colorado dealerships.

Sonic bought Grand Junction Subaru and Grand Junction Volkswagen in Colorado from Ron Bubar. Bubar is retiring, according to Kerrigan Advisors, which represented him in the transaction. Sonic did not use a broker.

The Subaru dealership marks a return to the Japanese brand for Sonic. It had owned a Subaru dealership in Columbus, Ohio, but sold it to Germain Motor Co. in 2019. With the acquisition, Sonic has three Volkswagen dealerships in its portfolio.

"These two franchises represent the first of several upcoming acquisitions for our franchised dealership business, and we are pleased to add Subaru to our brand portfolio and continue to grow our partnership with Volkswagen," Sonic President Jeff Dyke said in a statement. "Both of these brands are in high demand in the Colorado market and will allow us to continue…

Tesla Inc. plans to shutter some high-rent showrooms within shopping malls and instead emphasize remote work and cheaper locations, according to a report on the website Electrek.

The electric automaker plans to rent spaces in mall parking lots, warehouses and other locations to manage test-drive fleets and delivery centers, Electrek said, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Tesla also plans to make a large part of its retail work force remote, helping customers place orders online, the report said.

Tesla did not immediately return a request for comment.

The shift in strategy comes more than two years after Tesla said it would close many of its brick-and-mortar locations to focus on online sales, before reversing that decision a few weeks later.

Tesla operates more than 170 stores and galleries across the country, according to its website, including many in malls and shopping centers. This week, it reported it had 598 store and service…

WASHINGTON/DETROIT -- Electric vehicle producer Rivian plans to invest $5 billion initially in its second U.S. assembly plant, according to a company document shared with state economic development officials.

The plant, dubbed "Project Tera," requires an estimated 10,000 acres of land according to a revised economic development document seen by Reuters, but economic development officials said finding a piece of land that large would be highly unlikely. The initial proposal seen by Reuters did not identify Rivian by name and said the facility required only 2,000 acres. In comparison, BMW's South Carolina assembly plant sits on about 1,200 acres.

The target date to start production at the Rivian plant is the second quarter of 2023 with construction beginning in the fall of 2021, according to the revised proposal. However, several people familiar with the matter said the COVID-19 pandemic will likely delay that timeline by up to six months.

Rivian declined …

DETROIT — Three high-ranking Stellantis executives in the U.S. who predate the DaimlerChrysler era are retiring this week, the automaker said Tuesday.

Scott Garberding, who was head of manufacturing for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles; Mark Chernoby, FCA's chief technical compliance officer; and Michael Keegan, FCA's chief audit, sustainability and compliance officer, are leaving as Stellantis combines the operations of FCA and PSA Group. The two automakers closed their merger in January.

Mike Manley, the former FCA CEO who is now head of Americas for Stellantis, said in a statement that each executive made "countless contributions that have helped shape who we are today."

Garberding, who joined Chrysler in 1993, was the manufacturing head while FCA revamped its Detroit assembly operations to build the next generation of Jeep SUVs, including the new three-row Grand Cherokee L and the revived Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer nameplates.

Under Garberding's wat…

North Carolina dealership Lumberton Honda faced an online backlash after an employee referred to a Black customer with a derogatory term on a Facebook post about the woman's car purchase Thursday.

The post on the dealership's Facebook page included a photograph of customer Trinity Bethune, who had just purchased her first vehicle at the store, with the caption "Congratulations Bon Quisha." The post has since been deleted. The Lumberton Honda employee who made the post has been fired, a person who answered the phone at the dealership but declined to be identified told Automotive News on Monday.

"Bon Quisha" is seen as a slur used to make fun of Black names.

Bethune responded to the Facebook post with a comment saying, "I'm not sure if this is a 'joke' or something but my name is definitely Trinity Bethune. I'm very offended by this post, it's almost a racial slur. If I'm not addressed by MY name then please don't address me at all."…

Growing Hudson Automotive Group plans to acquire its first Mercedes-Benz dealerships with the purchase of three of the luxury stores in Ohio and Kentucky.

Hudson Automotive of Charleston, S.C., plans to buy Mercedes-Benz of Louisville in Kentucky and Mercedes-Benz of Cincinnati and Mercedes-Benz of West Chester, both in Ohio, from Peterson Automotive Collection. The transaction is expected to close in mid-September, Hudson Automotive CEO David Hudson said.

Peterson Automotive Collection is owned by David Peterson, who is retiring. Ed Keady, Peterson Automotive Collection's operating partner who has a minority stake in the three stores, will stay on with Hudson Automotive in his current role and will also keep his minority stake, Hudson noted.

"We're effectively buying the dealership and he's [Keady] retaining a piece of the deal," Hudson said.

Louisville Business First reported on the transaction last week.

"Mercedes is a great brand," Hu…

Lithia Motors Inc. has entered the state of Alabama, acquiring Koby Subaru in Mobile, as it continues to add dealerships in the Southeast — a key region in its expansion plans and where the retailer has the fewest number of stores.

The nation's second-largest dealership group bought the store July 12 from Roger Koby, according to Haig Partners, a buy-sell firm in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which represented the seller in the transaction.

Lithia said Tuesday that it has renamed the store Subaru of Mobile. Terms weren't disclosed, but Lithia said it paid for the dealership using existing balance sheet funding.

The retailer said the Koby Subaru acquisition and last month's purchase of Michael's Subaru of Bellevue in Washington combined would add an expected $155 million in annual revenue.

Since July 2020, when Lithia announced its five-year plan to grow to $50 billion in annual revenue, it has purchased dealerships that are expected to generate $8 bill…

Rodo Inc., a retail technology startup that lets customers buy or lease new vehicles online and get them delivered the same day, has nailed down $18 million in its latest round of financing, with support coming from some big names in auto retailing and a famous entertainer.

New Jersey-based auto sector services provider Holman Enterprises and New York-based Evolution VC Partners, which describes itself as a culture-tech investment firm, led the financing round. Holman Enterprises is the parent company of Holman Automotive, which is ranked No. 27 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S.

Additional participants in the funding round included existing investor IAC and actor and comedian Kevin Hart's HartBeat Ventures.

Also involved were Mack McLarty, a longtime dealer and vice chairman of RML Automotive, which is No. 31 on the Automotive News list; his son, Franklin McLarty, CEO of McLarty Diversified Holdings; and Texas …

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. will reinstate mask mandates at facilities in Missouri and Florida, effective Wednesday, as the delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 continues to spread.

The automaker informed employees of the decision Tuesday. Additionally, Ford said it will require U.S. employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 before any international business travel, based on recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Missouri is home to Ford's Kansas City Assembly Plant, where the company builds the profitable F-150 pickup and Transit van.

The UAW and Detroit 3 automakers dropped mask mandates at facilities around the country July 12, but cases have again started to rise in some parts of the U.S. Ford said it could make additional changes in the future.

"We will continue to evaluate COVID-19 case data to make further protocol changes," the automaker said in a statement.

…

One of the most surprising things I learned in my time working for Ford Motor Co. is how far in advance automakers are working. This may be 2021 to us, but if you work in product development or engineering at an automaker, it's more like 2026 to you.

Jaguar Land Rover CEO Thierry Bollore, who took over about a year ago, this year announced a new strategy for the Jaguar brand. It entails ending production of all the vehicles in Jag's current lineup in 2025 and replacing them with two, possibly three, electric vehicles that share a platform separate from those underpinning Land Rover vehicles.

Bollore says JLR is looking to partner with another automaker for the chassis planned for the next-generation electric Jags.

This may be one instance where an automaker isn't working years into the future. If JLR has identified a potential partner, officials are being coy about it. Bollore's "Reimagine" plan was unwrapped in February, and it seems likely that nothin…

Add Detroit to the cities where Amazon is testing its new battery-powered electric delivery van designed and built by Rivian.

Last week in Royal Oak, a suburb north of the Detroit city limits, an Amazon driver in a hand-built Rivian van, accompanied by a Rivian engineer, was delivering packages. It's one of three vans currently being tested in the Detroit area.

Amazon plans to test the vans in 16 cities ahead of the official rollout, which starts next year with a production run of 10,000 vehicles. The vans have been spotted in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Tulsa, Okla.

The Rivian engineer accompanying the Amazon driver said the vans undergoing testing in the Detroit area were assembled at Rivian's Plymouth, Mich., engineering and design center. The van looked production ready, with no obvious prototype or unfinished parts.

Amazon has invested more than $700 million in Rivian and plans to purchase 100,000 elect…

Tesla Inc. on Monday posted its largest-ever quarterly profit — $1.14 billion — as it delivered a record number of vehicles in the second quarter despite a global semiconductor shortage that has hampered much of the auto industry.

Revenue during the quarter nearly doubled to $11.9 billion, with automotive gross margins hitting 28 percent, the electric vehicle maker said. The company also was aided by $354 million in sales of regulatory credits to competitors, 17 percent less than a year earlier.

Tesla delivered 201,304 vehicles in the quarter, up 121 percent from the same period a year earlier. All but 1,895 were Model 3 sedans or Model Y crossovers. 

The company's second-quarter net income was roughly equal to its total profit in the previous 12 months and more than 10 times the $104 million it earned in the second quarter of 2020.

Tesla suffered a $23 million hit from its investment in Bitcoin during the second quarter. It had made $101 m…