A Detroit area Ford dealership owned by auto retail giant Lithia Motors Inc. “let go” an employee who posted an inflammatory comment about the UAW on social media — around the time thousands of Ford workers went on strike last week. Suburban Ford of Ferndale on Sunday posted an apology on its Facebook page for
Nearly two years after purchasing Larry H. Miller Dealerships in one of the largest deals in auto retail history, Asbury Automotive Group Inc. has lined up an encore. Publicly traded Asbury plans to buy the privately owned Jim Koons Automotive Cos. of the mid-Atlantic in what would be the first dealership megadeal since the frenzied
Washington state’s Car Pros Automotive Group acquired its first luxury dealership as part of a purchase of two Los Angeles stores on Aug. 21. The retailer bought Nick Alexander BMW and Nick Alexander Mini, from the Alexander family, according to Car Pros CEO Matthew Phillips. “We’ve always wanted the opportunity to expand into luxury, if
An Arizona dealership executive died after being injured in a crash involving an electric scooter and a pickup on the store’s property. Andrew Kimmerle, business manager at Sanderson Ford in Glendale, Ariz., was riding an electric scooter on the dealership’s lot the morning of Aug. 15 when he collided with a Ford pickup, which was
Electric vehicle pricing and days’ supply of high-priced EV nameplates appear to be top of mind for some of the nation’s largest auto retailers, especially amid price-slashing by U.S. EV market sales leader Tesla Inc. Sonic Automotive Inc. President Jeff Dyke, on the company’s July 27 second-quarter earnings call, said Tesla’s pricing strategy has been
Lithia Motors Inc. last week exited North Dakota with the sale of two dealerships and separately closed a dealership it acquired just more than a month ago. The auto retail giant on Thursday sold its last two North Dakota dealerships, Lithia Ford of Grand Forks and Lithia Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram of Grand Forks, to the Nelson family,
After a year in which each of the six publicly traded auto retailers bought dealerships — including some that hadn’t done so in years — all but one acquired again in 2022. But the overall purchase total was a fraction of the number of U.S. stores the publics acquired in 2021, a year dominated by
Less could be more for Sonic Automotive Inc. and its EchoPark brand of used-vehicle stores. In June, Sonic revealed it was suspending operations at eight EchoPark used-only locations and at an unspecified number of delivery/buy centers. On its second-quarter earnings call last month, the retailer indicated the figure included 14 EchoPark delivery/buy centers and three
MEDFORD, Ore. — Three years into Lithia Motors Inc.‘s audacious plan to reach $50 billion in revenue by the end of 2025, two things are clear. One is that Lithia remains confident it can reach its goal, which will require an industrywide rebound and a continued torrid pace of acquisitions. The second is that the
Lithia Motors Inc. sold three dealerships in separate June transactions, including one it had purchased just this month. The other two were sold to a pair of the largest dealership groups in the country. Lithia on Tuesday sold Priority Toyota Hampton in Virginia to Mills Automotive Group, Tom Dobry, Lithia’s vice president of strategic operations,
