Carl Gregory Enterprises to sell dealerships to publicly traded company

Carl Gregory Enterprises, the last of the large locally owned Columbus car dealerships, has reached an agreement to sell to a national retailer, the Ledger-Enquirer confirmed this morning.

AutoNation, Inc.,  paid an undisclosed amount for Gregory's 13 stores in Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The sale is subject to manufacturer approvals and is expected to be finalized later this year, according to a statement from AutoNation, America's largest automotive retailer with 237 stores.

The largest of Gregory's dealership are in Columbus where he owns the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Honda Hyundai and Volkswagen stores clustered on one site off north Veterans Parkway. He also has a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep dealership on Victory Drive.

Gregory was not immediately available for comment.

Gregory came to Columbus from Kansas in April 1987 and began to build an automobile dealership company that was recently ranked as the 113th largest such enterprise in the country.

In the early years, he was in a partnership with Jay Stelzenmuller and Gene Miller. They had a Chrysler, Plymouth and Saab store on Box Road. In early 1989, Gregory bought out  Stelzenmuller and Miller.

Since that time he has added the Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Fiat, Ford, Lincoln, Hyundai, Honda and Volkswagen brands to his inventory.

"The rest is history," he said earlier this summer in a lengthy interview with the Ledger-Enquirer.

In 2014, Carl Gregory Enterprises generated $480 million in revenue, selling approximately 16,750 new and used vehicles. The company employs about 600 people.

Gregory was asked in that interview published on July 5 if he would consider selling his business.

"Look, at the end of the day we have options that we are always looking at whether it's acquiring, whether it's divesting some," Gregory said. "As a businessman, I have to consider all of the options that are available to me, so I would never say no to anything. That's how deals are made. You never know. If there's a sense of consolidation that's going on, if the deal was right, we would look at it."

Gregory said at the time that offers for his dealerships came on a regular basis.

"We get a lot of calls from people wanting to sell us stores," he said. "On the other hand, we get lots of calls from big companies wanting to buy us. And that's been going on for years and years, and I think that's the nature of the business. What I'm telling you  is this: We will look at all opportunities that arise."

Less than seven years ago, also most of Columbus' large car dealerships were locally owned. That began to change in 2008 when Bill Heard Enterprises, one of the largest Chevrolet dealerships in the nation with stores from Las Vegas to Orlando, went out of business during the worst of the national economic crisis. Bill Heard Chevrolet was sold out of bankruptcy to Emanuel Jones, an Atlanta-area dealer. Rob Doll Nissan went under in 2009 and was sold out of bankruptcy to a dealer in south Alabama.

In October 2011, Rivertown Ford owner Richard Stephens sold his dealership to Group 1 Automotive out of Texas. It was the precursor to a much larger deal. Jay's Auto Group, which had the Toyota dealership among others, went out on its own terms when Stelzenmuller, sold his business in December 2013 to Group 1 Automotive, another national retailer that is now doing business under the Rivertown name in Bradley Park.

In addition to the acquisition of Carl Gregory Enterprises, AutoNation also said it is purchasing three stores in the Baltimore market from Valley Motors Auto Group.

“We are pleased to have the opportunity to add 13 stores in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee and three stores in the Baltimore, Md./Washington, D.C. market and bring AutoNation’s store count to 253 from Coast to Coast," said Mike Jackson, AutoNation’s chairman, chief executive officer and president, "We continue to seek acquisitions to leverage our scale, expand the AutoNation brand and provide a peerless experience to more customers.”

AutoNation is a public company that is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. AutoNation closed at $60.91 a share in trading on Monday.

This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 8:15 AM with the headline "Carl Gregory Enterprises to sell dealerships to publicly traded company."