Norwich
Owner Rick MacLeay has sold his longtime Norwich Subaru dealership to Prime Motor Group, which will rename the dealership Prime Subaru Vermont and relocate it to Sykes Mountain Avenue in White River Junction, MacLeay said in an interview last week.
Westwood, Mass.-based Prime Motor sells 20 different auto brands across 28 locations in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, including Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Honda, Porsche and Ford. The fast-growing dealership group, which also owns a Subaru franchises in Hudson, N.H., has been steadily buying up and opening other franchises since founder David Rosenberg and partner Matt McGovern launched the company in 2007 with the acquisition of Clair Auto Group.
MacLeay, who joined The Car Store in 1975 and became a partner in the 1990s before acquiring 100 percent ownership in 2009, said he had not been looking to sell the dealership when Rosenberg reached out to him in March about buying the franchise. But the more he mulled it over, MacLeay said, the more attractive the idea became, especially since Prime, as a regionwide dealer, “will be able to bring more resources to expand the business.”
Another factor that came to bear on his decision to sell, MacLeay said, was ongoing frustration with getting Subaru of New England, his franchisor, to approve his plan to renovate the former Upper Valley Lanes and Games bowling alley on Sykes Mountain Avenue into a new Subaru dealership.
MacLeay bought the 7-acre property in 2015 for $1.49 million from Valley Land Corp., but has been stymied with Subaru over the site plan.
“I was bogged down in how I wanted to use the building as an owner and they didn’t see what I was doing as what they wanted,” MacLeay said, declining to go into specifics over the differences. “As a franchisor, they get to control where things are sold and what kind of facility they want. Without their approval, I could not move forward.”
MacLeady said he’s had “other offers over the years” to sell the dealership, but he never found a buyer with whom he was comfortable to pass along the business. But MacLeay said he was impressed with the pitch made by Rosenberg, a second-generation automobile dealer with an MBA from Columbia University who MacLeay said has assured him all that all of The Care Store’s 30 to 35 employees will be able to stay on in the same positions they currently hold.
“My first concern obviously is the employees and the other is customers,” MacLeay said. “And I believe the sale will be good for both. David has big plans.”
Terms of the sale, which is expected to close Monday, are not being disclosed.
Not included in the deal is The Car Store’s real estate along Route 5 in Norwich, which MacLeay said he will lease to Prime Auto while it moves ahead converting the Sykes Mountain Avenue property into the new dealership location. MacLeay said he has not decided what he will do with the property after the dealership moves.
Rosenberg did not respond to messages left with his office for comment.
The Car Store sells about 1,000 new and used automobiles annually, MacLeay said, but its comparatively small size has put it at a disadvantage when waiting for models to arrive on the lot from the manufacturer, with whom bigger dealer have more clout. He expects that will not be an issue with Prime Auto, which sells more than 30,000 vehicles annually, according to the company’s website.
“In the recent couple of years we haven’t been able to get the cars for our customers, so a lot of our customers gave gone somewhere else. If we had the cars, we’d have the customers. Generally speaking, if you’re small, you have a harder time getting the cars. Small is not considered better in this day and age. Bigger is better,” MacLeay said.
Both the franchisor and customers, he said, “want to see more cars in inventory, more people running around.”
At the same time, MacLeay acknowledged that many of his customers also appreciated the small-town feel of his dealership — not least himself.
“I have one location, one franchise,” MacLeay said. “I never really dreamed of having 35 franchises.”
MacLeay, 63, who lives in Hanover and grew up in Windsor, first got into the car business washing cars at Manchester’s Gulf service station, now the Irving Oil station, on Main Street in Hanover when he was 15. Returning to the Upper Valley after graduating from the University of Vermont, MacLeay went to work as a salesman for former dealership owner James Southworth.
Southworth’s car dealership began as a service station on Elm Street in 1950 before it became a Chrysler and Plymouth franchisee in 1960s and moved to the current Route 5 location in 1969. Over the years the dealership sold Land Rover, Peugeot, Subaru, Mazda and Dodge vehicles.
In 1983, Southworth sold the dealership to longtime employee Charles Ffolliott, who renamed it The Car Store, borrowing the name from what it had always been called by area residents. Fflolliot opened a second location across the river in 1985 on Route 120 in Lebanon, where he moved the Dodge and Mazda lines. Then, in 1994, the Lebanon Dodge and Mazda franchises were sold to Miller Auto Group.
MacLeay became a minority owner of the business in the late 1990s, he said, acquiring his stake through “sweat equity” before gaining 100 percent control of the dealership in 2009, in the depth of the Great Recession. Employees include his son, sales manager Branson MacLeay, and future son-in-law, sales associate Chris Peirce, a student a Colby-Sawyer College.
Rosenberg grew up in the dealership business. His father is Ira Rosenberg, owner of Ira Motor Group, a Danvers, Mass.-based owner of Toyota, Lexus, Pontiac, Hyundai, Mazda, Porsche-Audi and Subaru franchises.
David Rosenberg sold the business to Group 1 Automotive in 1999 and stayed on as general manager for seven years.
In 2007, he formed Prime Motor Group and embarked on acquiring franchises. The company now has 1,600 employees.
John Lippman can be reached at 603-727-3219 or jlippman@vnews.com.
