News

The dealership acquisition story is still unfolding

Last year, Automotive News for the first time rigorously documented new-vehicle dealership transactions, or what is commonly referred to in the industry as buy-sells.

As fate would have it, 2021 arguably was the biggest year for dealership acquisitions in history. But last year's data tracking wasn't a one-time thing.

Throughout 2022, Automotive News has continued to collect data submitted by dealers, buy-sell brokers and others and we have hunted down details on other transactions found in company regulatory filings, local news reports and social media posts.

All of which leads us to Monday's paper.

On Page 1 you'll find another data-rich story focusing on buy-sell activity for the first half of 2022.

The big takeaway?

Private groups — not the publicly traded auto retailers — collectively were the most active buyers. And they often bought just one or two dealerships at a t…

Albert Johnson petitioned for more than a decade before he became the first Black dealer for General Motors.

Johnson entered the car business by balancing a job in hospital administration with being the "salesman who sold from a briefcase" at Noting Oldsmobile in Kirkwood, Mo.

He was not permitted to sell from the dealership premises in 1954, according to African-American New Car Dealers, a historical database created by former Ford Motor Co. executive Rusty Restuccia.

"I sold more cars in a year than three of our salesmen put together," Johnson told The History Makers, a collection of oral histories capturing the Black experience.

Johnson spent 15 years asking to lead a GM dealership, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2008 Johnson told Automotive News that he appealed to Martin Luther King Jr., who took Johnson's case to President John F. Kennedy for help petitioning the Detroit automakers.

He succeeded in 1967, taking over a strugg…

When Nathan Conyers acquired a Ford dealership in 1970, he was a unicorn of sorts — a Black auto dealer in a profession that was virtually all white.

At the time, Conyers was a partner in a successful Detroit law firm, a position that offered financial comfort and political connections. But Conyers' father, a former factory worker and union organizer, preached the benefits of business ownership.

His son got the message. In 1970, Conyers and his brother — U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan — acquired a Ford dealership in Detroit, the first Black-owned Ford outlet east of Chicago.

Conyers urged the Detroit 3 to provide training and financial support for fledgling Black dealers. With the help of Rev. Jesse Jackson, he formed the National Black Dealers Association later that year to press his case.

"The normal profile of a dealer is a person whose father, uncle, brother or some relative has been in the business," Conyers told the Detroit Free Press …

When Irma Elder's husband, James, died in 1983, he left her with three children and a Ford dealership — and the courage to become the first woman to own a Ford dealership in the Detroit area.

"Every penny that we had was put into keeping the dealership alive," Irma Elder told Automotive News in June 2008. "It was absolutely necessary that I take over. My father said, 'You have to do it.' My mother said, 'I'll pray for you. It will be all right, because God takes care of widows.' "

Under her leadership and as a testament to her business acumen, that one Ford dealership grew into Elder Automotive Group, which became one of the largest woman- and minority-owned auto retailers in the country. Elder was 84 when she died in 2014.

By 2008, just before the start of the Great Recession, Elder Automotive operated 11 dealerships in Michigan and Florida, representing Aston Martin, Ford, Land Rover, Lincoln, Jaguar, Mercury, Saab and Jeep brands. And in the late 19…

Jenell Ross, president of Bob Ross Auto Group in Centerville, Ohio, is a trailblazer and influential dealer in her own right.

The second-generation retailer became the first Black dealer to chair the American International Automobile Dealers Association in 2013 and she chaired the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Cincinnati branch. She also sits on other boards of companies such as Cars.com, even as she advocates for the development of more women and minorities as both dealers and employees in retail automotive.

But it was her parents, Bob and Norma Ross, who first trod the career path that Jenell has traveled.

Bob started in the retail auto industry in 1962 selling cars at Shannon Buick in Dayton, Ohio, and was in the first class of dealer hopefuls enrolled in General Motors' Minority Dealer Academy, in 1972, according to Ross.

Norma was an elementary school teacher and a curriculum consultant in the Dayton Public Sc…

VISIONARY DEALERS

The history of the U.S. auto industry is full of tales of car dealers who blazed new trails and influenced those who came behind them. Automotive News shared the stories of 50 of them back in 2009 in our first Visionary Dealers section. We’ve revisited that theme of pioneering retailers to select another 25 who fought for dealer rights, made marketing innovations, took chances on emerging brands, broke new ground in online sales or agitated for greater diversity among their ranks. They aren’t the only visionary dealers in the industry’s present or past, but their achievements provide lessons and inspiration for their peers.

Barbara and Porterfield Wilson were a dynamic dealer duo well known in Detroit's Black community in the 1970s and beyond.

During their lifetimes, they were avid boaters and moved in a social circle that included former Mayor Coleman Young, according to dealers and others who knew them.

The couple owned Porterfield Wilson Pontiac-GMC Truck in Detroit and Honda and Mazda dealerships in nearby Ferndale, Mich. Barbara became the industry's first Black female dealer principal, overseeing the Honda store.

In the early 1960s, before Porterfield started selling cars, he helped build them at a Chrysler-Plymouth factory in Detroit on the night shift and had a part-time side hustle during the day as a pharmacy clerk, recalled Joe Gordon, a longtime family friend who was once the couple's Pontiac sales manager.

It was during his day job that Porterfield made connections that led to him selling cars at a Detroit Chrysler-Plymouth dealership. Gordon called Po…

Red McCombs describes himself as "a wheeler-dealer."

"There has never been a deal he didn't want to buy," said his grandson, Joe Shields, "and then, for the right price, there hasn't been a deal he isn't willing to sell."

Shields, vice president of McCombs' namesake dealership group, Red McCombs Automotive in San Antonio, said his grandfather counts upward of 400 businesses that he has owned during his career. Some succeeded. Others did not. But McCombs, his grandson said, was skilled at recognizing a bad bet and exiting quickly.

His successes, starting in the early 1950s with used-car lots in Corpus Christi, Texas, eventually would become McCombs Enterprises — a venture that, besides automotive, includes real estate, ranching, energy and philanthropy.

His auto retail business ranks No. 69 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups in the U.S., with retail sales of 13,905 new vehicles in 2021. Shields, also director of business de…

The first 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 produced by General Motors was delivered this month to dealer Rick Hendrick, who bought it for $3.6 million at a charity auction in January.

Hendrick, a noted Corvette collector and CEO of Hendrick Automotive Group, also bought the first 2023 Z06 convertible for $1 million.

SAN DIEGO — The used-car market perseveres, but industry experts warn the conditions that allowed dealers to sell with ease and vigor in 2021 no longer exist. And dealers are buckling down to be ready for the changes afoot.

2023 is shaping up to be a year of caution and diligence on the used-car side, according to dealers, used-car-related company leaders and analysts who convened at the Used Car Week event in San Diego last week. Some are bracing for what could become severe destruction of used-car demand but say it has not yet reared its head. Still, speculation of recession and signs of a more prolonged slowdown are pushing players in the market to tighten their belts and get ready.

That's already happening at traditional dealerships and at online upstarts such as Carvana Co., which last week said it was cutting 1,500 jobs, or 8 percent of its work force.

"Making sure that you kind of batten down the hatches and get ready for …

Thierry Bollore's two-year stint as CEO of Jaguar Land Rover was memorable for failing to generate a single profitable quarter during a period when rival luxury automakers were posting record margins.

The Financial Times in the United Kingdom reported it was Bollore's inability to mitigate the industry's microchip shortage that prompted JLR owner Tata Motors to push for his resignation. Tata said he will step down effective Dec. 31 for "personal reasons."

In what will presumably be his last public appearance with JLR, Bollore spoke passionately on this month's quarterly results call about the chip crisis.

"We should not forget that the supply of chips is really a crisis in our sector," he said, adding that it would take "years" before the situation returned to normal.

As a smaller player in the industry, JLR found it harder to get much-needed deals with chip makers amid the supply squeeze. In September, one supplier sever…