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10/23/2015
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OCTOBER 26, 2015
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●●●
GM CEO Mary Barra says of
the future: “We can lead and
disrupt ourselves.” Jaguar
Land Rover chief Ralf Speth
focuses on new plants and
a new crossover. | PAGE 4 |
A stealth
giant in
auto retail
AMSI eyes 200 stores
after Swope purchase
Arlena Sawyers
and Lindsay Chappell
asawyers@crain.com
The titans who own the nation’s
largest privately held dealership
groups are mostly familiar names:
high-profile businessmen such as
Rick Hendrick, John Staluppi, Herb
Chambers, Rick Case, Dave Wilson,
Alan Potamkin and a handful of
other superstars.
But the biggest of them all appears
to be a hardnosed, hard-driving Florida entrepreneur you have
never heard of.
Through a string
of acquisitions in
recent years, Terry Taylor’s obsesTaylor: String
sively
secretive
of acquisitions
West Palm Beach,
Fla.-based company, Automotive Management Services Inc., has quietly amassed the
No. 1 private new-car dealership
group in the country — at least in
terms of the number of rooftops it
owns.
Taylor’s latest addition is 11 stores
from Sam Swope Auto Group of
Louisville, Ky., one of the nation’s
best-known family-owned dealership companies. The sale comes
less than a year after the group’s
founder, Sam Swope, died.
Mustang sales, just nine months into
the year, are their highest since 2007.
TOYOTA 2.0
Breaking
through?
Ford wants
profit surge
Now, Kawai’s career dovetails
with another radical transformaOYOTA CITY, Japan —
tion. Like never before, in the memWhen Mitsuru Kawai beory of most of today’s workers at
gan working at Toyota in
least, Toyota is reinventing itself to
1966, at age 18, the company
be leaner and meaner.
that would become the
Call it Toyota 2.0. It is a sweeping
world’s biggest automaker operated
metamorphosis. Years in the makonly two assembly
ing, the overhaul aims
plants. It built a modest
to aggressively sharpen
588,000 vehicles a year.
Toyota’s game in everyBy the time the nothing from manufacnonsense Kawai was
turing and product
promoted to the execuplanning to design and
tive suite in April, at age
human resources.
67, Toyota was churn“They are ready to
ing out 10 million vehimake life very difficult
cles a year through 46
for the competition,”
production affiliates in
says Kurt Sanger, an au28 countries.
to analyst with Deutsche
It is perhaps because Toyoda: Leads company Securities Japan, who
Kawai has seen so much from defense to offense gives Toyota shares his
of Toyota’s past that
only “buy” rating among
President Akio Toyoda tapped the
Japanese automakers. “It’s all quite
shop-floor veteran to help chart its
impressive.”
future.
The rekindled confidence will be
“I have witnessed the entire evoluon display at this week’s Tokyo Motion, everything that has happened
tor Show, where Toyota is parading
to this company,” said Kawai, now a
a myriad of concepts, from a snappy
senior managing officer. “It has
compact sports car and futuristic
grown steadily like a tree. That exsee TOYOTA, Page 26
cites me.”
Hans Greimel
hgreimel@crain.com
T
Key launch successes
boost expectations
Nick Bunkley
nbunkley@crain.com
DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. sold
nearly 88,000 more vehicles to U.S.
buyers in the first nine months of this
year than at the same point last year.
More than 40 percent of those incremental sales were Mustangs.
Redesigned about the same time as
the F-150, the Mustang hasn’t received
nearly as much attention from investors
and analysts because its volumes and
profits are lower. But while F-series sales
are roughly flat from a year ago, Mustang sales have soared 61 percent to
their highest total
since 2007 — just
nine months into
the year.
The
Mustang’s
surge includes big
gains in markets
such as Southern
California, where
the Detroit 3 have Fields: A chance
fared poorly in re- to deliver
cent years. Ford
says 51 percent of Mustang buyers are
new to the automaker.
“Twenty-four- to 32-year-olds are
buying that car and putting Ford on
their shopping list,” said Doug Davis,
general manager of Kearny Pearson
Ford in San Diego. “Before, they weren’t
even considering Ford.”
That sort of shift is why Ford CEO
Mark Fields has described 2015 as a
“breakthrough year” for the automaker. Redoing the Mustang, F-150 and
several other important nameplates
cut into earnings last year and in the
first half of 2015. But now that dealer
lots finally are getting stocked up with
those updated vehicles, analysts are
BLOOMBERG
“
TALK FROM
THE TOP
Akio Toyoda’s aggressive reboot:
Drive changes to hone manufacturing,
product planning and design
see GIANT, Page 27
see FORD, Page 29
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