May 17, 2015 — New Country Motor Cars Inc. recently added six top-line franchises to bring its total number of locations to 30. It’s only the seventh transaction since January 2013 that included six or more dealerships and is the second biggest acquisition of the year. Michael Cantanucci’s New Country Automotive Group in Hartford, CT is turning into…
May 8, 2015 — The public dealer groups are off to a slow start in 2015 on the acquisition front. Asbury Automotive Group announced its first purchase of the year last night, acquiring Capitol City Nissan in the Atlanta area. The transaction is only the ninth this year completed by the six public groups according to data…
May 7, 2015 — With all the chatter of private equity and names like Warren Buffett getting into the automotive retail space, there have been few large deals completed. Only two transactions for more than eight stores and only six that have been for five or more have been signed since January 2013, according to data compiled… Continue Reading
May 7, 2015 — Audi is testing different car sharing models throughout various international markets, the latest being piloted in the U.S. The Banks Report first reported on March 26, 2014 that Audi was putting together a pilot program in San Francisco similar to its Audi Select initiative in Berlin that allows people to pay a monthly…
A story in Reuters last week reported that Guangzhou Auto is planning to launch its GS4 SUV in the U.S. in 2017 and is looking for dealers to partner with. It’s the latest Chinese automaker to announce plans to come to the U.S. — BYD (Warren Buffett owns a reported 10% — but don’t get starry… Continue Reading
April 27, 2015 — So far this year, there have been nine (updated from eight) acquisitions in the automotive retail vendor space, the latest deal being completed today by Reynolds and Reynolds. Today’s deal comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that Solera Holdings had acquired DME Automotive. Meanwhile, we know of at least another three deals…
April 27, 2015 — Solera Holdings announced last week it has acquired marketing firm DME Automotive. It’s the latest in a series a acquisitions and investments in the service and repair space for the industry. It’s a market that has been heating up since Solera jumped into it in late 2013 with an investment/acquisition of AutoPoint…
April 25, 2015 — This week, Gannett Co. announced the new name of the digital and broadcast company that will be created as part of the split with its newspaper business. The split should be completed sometime in the late second quarter or third quarter of this year. Meanwhile, the move likely will position Cars.com as a significant…
This is Section Three of our post 2015 NADA Report. In this section, Cars.com, DealerSocket, Solera Holdings and ELead1One are covered. The entire report, which we will be published in different sections is now over 10,000 words. We decided to break the report into different sections to make it more readable after talking with several subscribers. Section… Continue Reading
UPDATED — March 23, 2015: A recent article in the Wall Street Journal about General Motors’ Shop-Click-Drive initiative shows just how far the automotive industry has to go before consumers have the ability to complete the entire car buying transaction online. (Updates are in italics.) GM created Shop-Click-Drive (www.ShopClickDrive.com) to make it easier for their… Continue Reading