Monday, March 02, 2009

Chasing A Rabbit

Occasionally, we all hear or see some tidbit of information that triggers some level of curiosity about the item itself or something related to it.
This curiosity leads to the desire to learn more about the item of interest.
One of the advantages of being retired (or semi-retired until April 15th, in my case) is the time to chase down such items of interest and learn more about them.
Thus the following information is presented for your edification:

SOME RESEARCH

I have been intrigued by the growth of an automobile dealer name in our area.
It started out last year when I began to see advertisements for Landers/McLarty Toyota in Fayetteville, Tennessee.
A few months later I saw that Huntsville Dodge had become Landers/McLarty Dodge,
Then, while driving by the dealership, I saw that Huntsville Subaru had become Landers/McLarty Subaru.
On the news this week I saw that that "the parent company of Landers/McLarty" was in the process of "acquiring" the property formerly known as Bill Heard Chevrolet in Huntsville.
That would give them a total of four dealers in the area.(Toyota, Subaru, Dodge, Chevrolet)

All of which got me wondering: is every car dealer in Huntsville going to be called "Landers/McLarty (name of car)" in a few months?
And, who is the parent company of Landers/McLarty?

Well, it turns out, after a little Google research, that Landers/McLarty is run by Steve Landers and Matt McLarty out of Bentonville, Arkansas.
They own/run several car dealerships in that area.
They, in turn, are owned by United Automotive Group, in Bloomfield, Michigan.
The CEO of United Automotive Group is Roger Penske, former race driver.
Sales of United Automotive Group last year were approximately $12 billion.
They run several car/truck/transportation related companies.
They own 364 automobile dealerships all over the country (and overseas) and sell virtually every brand you can think of.

My sense is that they are buying car dealerships now, when business is bad and values are low, will hold them for two or three years until the market improves and the values increase, then sell them for a nice, tidy profit.
This is good business.
Ah capitalism, the enemy of Mr. B Husein Obama and his cohorts.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just to add to that, I believe the third (silent?) partner is RLJ - Robert L Johnson, the founder of BET. I think I have seen the company referred to as RLJ-Landers McLarty. Also, Mack McLarty was Clinton's first Chief of Staff and the former CEO of ArkLa Gas (natural gas company in my neck o the woods back in North Louisiana. - SET

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