The family’s flagship Honda dealership and its Ford dealership along U.S. 35 in Beavercreek will be purchased by Columbus-based Germain Motor Co., Hidy said. Those two transactions are awaiting the car manufacturers’ approval before the deals close, but, “No one expects that to be an issue,” Hidy said. The sale is expected to be completed in late January. Germain operates nine dealerships in the Columbus area, as well as four in Michigan and three in Florida.
Superior Auto Cincinnati, which operates Hyundai, Acura, Kia and Honda dealerships in the Cincinnati area, has closed on its purchase of Hidy Hyundai in Beavercreek and is scheduled to close Jan. 5 on the Hidy Acura dealership in Centerville, according to Hidy and Steve Massie of Superior Auto.
Terms of the sale and the sale agreements were not disclosed.
“Now is the right time,” Hidy said of his family’s decision to sell the dealerships owned by his father Dave Hidy and himself. The car business “is back to what it was” before the recession, he said.
The Hidy family of dealerships started with a Honda dealership in Xenia in 1975. The Ford, Acura and Hyundai dealerships were added within the last decade.
Dayton-area television viewers have for years seen Joe Hidy’s children close the car dealerships’ commercials with the signature tag line, “It’s going to be HUGE-Juh!”
The buyouts follow an accelerating pattern of dealership mergers across the industry, and it’s a pattern “we’ll continue to see,” Ohio Automobile Dealers Association President Tim Doran said.
“The economies of scale require it,” Doran said.
Owners of a single dealership or a handful of dealerships face higher costs for computer systems and other support systems on a per-car-sold basis than larger dealership groups, making it more difficult to compete, Doran said.
In the mid-1970s — when Ohio law prohibited a dealership owner from buying other manufacturers’ dealerships in the same market — there were 1,960 dealerships, each with its own principal owner, in the state. Doran said that law was changed in 1979, and today, there are 830 dealerships in the state, operated by 330 principal owners who have been able to pass along some of the savings from their larger-scale operations to consumers.
The White Family Company, parent of multiple Dayton-area White-Allen dealerships, has been on the buying end of the consolidation trend. It operates dealerships in Wyoming, South Dakota and in the Toledo and Columbus areas of Ohio, and two months ago signed a letter of intent to buy two dealerships in Colorado.
The Hidy family of dealerships has 225 employees, and Joe Hidy said those employees, as well as his dealership’s customers, will be in good hands under the new owners.
Hidy said Superior Auto Cincinnati — which under the Betagole family’s ownership opened the first Hyundai dealership in Ohio in the late 1980s — were “a good fit” for Hidy’s Hyundai and Acura dealerships. And he said he approached Steve Germain about buying Hidy’s Honda and Ford dealerships because of Germain’s strong reputation in the industry.
While he said he couldn’t speak on the new owners’ behalf, Hidy said, “It’s my understanding that 90-plus percent of our dealerships’ employees will be retained if they choose to stay. And it’s part of the deal that customers are going to be well-taken-care-of. Those two things are very important to me.”
Calls to Germain were directed to John Malishenko, operations director for Germain Motor Co. Malishenko could not be reached for comment Monday or Tuesday. Superior’s Steve Massie confirmed the sales via email but could not be reached for additional comment.
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