White River Junction
MacLeay has acquired the Hyundai dealership on Sykes Mountain Avenue in White River Junction from Gateway Motors, only five months after he sold The Car Store, his Norwich Subaru dealership, and abandoned a plan to move it to the same stretch of road following a standoff with Subaru over the dealership’s design.
Gateway owners, brothers Charlie Hall and Allen Hall, have retained ownership of Gateway’s Ford-Lincoln dealership, although they are leasing out part of their body shop so MacLeay can expand the auto service part of the Hyundai dealership.
MacLeay has renamed the dealership White River Hyundai and has introduced one of his core operating tenets: seven-day-a-week car service. He’s converted bays that were used by Gateway for washing vehicles into “express service” bays for oil changes, state inspections, alignments and tire changes and is leasing space inside the adjacent Gateway Ford-Lincoln that is fitted out with lifts for major repairs. He also is in the process of purchasing a piece of property and a building from Gateway.
The Hyundai dealership employs about 15 people and MacLeay said he hopes to hire more. He is forbidden to poach employees from his former dealership under terms of the sale.
MacLeay said he was particularly interested in Hyundai because of its push into green technology, including electric vehicles. He said it was never his intention to sit on the beach following the sale of his former dealership.
“My sale of The Car Store wasn’t a retirement move,” he said. “I’d rather be busy.”
The sale of Gateway’s Hyundai franchise is the most recent car dealership to change ownership in the Upper Valley in recent months. Gerrish Honda in Lebanon was sold to Connecticut-based Gengras Motor Cars in December following MacLeay’s sale of the Subaru franchise to Massachusetts-based Prime Motor Group.
Gateway’s owners added the Hyundai dealership in 1998 and built the current building in 2002.
Both MacLeay and Charlie Hall were vague about who approached who first about a deal, although MacLeay said conversations began not long after he sold The Car Store. “It happened organically,” MacLeay said. “And it happened relatively quickly.”
For their part, Charlie Hall said, the sale of the Hyundai dealership was “just one of those things that came about. It came from a casual conversation and started from there … and after talking we just thought it would be a good fit for him and a good fit for me and my brother. We can now focus on our meat and potatoes, which is the Ford and Lincoln market.”
MacLeay said he’s always thought Sykes Mountain Avenue was a good location for a dealership because of the presence of two other dealerships on the road — Gateway Motors and White River Toyota. His former Subaru dealership will be moving to the site of the former Upper Valley Lanes and Games, where new owner Prime currently operates its used vehicle lot.
“In the car business, you like traffic,” MacLeay said. That’s why he wanted to move his Subaru dealership to the site of the former bowling alley, but then couldn’t agree with Subaru on the design and layout of the showroom and lot.
Nonetheless, MacLeay said, “I got here. Just in a roundabout way.”
John Lippman can be reached at 603-727-3219 or jlippman@vnews.com.
