Galpin Owner May Create Car Mega-Dealership

Galpin Ford’s owner Bert Boeckmann is trying to consolidate the number of Ford and Lincoln-Mercury car dealerships in the San Fernando Valley as part of the auto maker’s plan to set up a network of mega-sized car stores, according to a car industry trade publication.

Boeckmann declined to comment on the Automotive News story.

Ford spokesman John Ochs would not say whether the Valley is a consolidation target, but he did say that Ford is committed to finding two or three markets where it can establish new mega-stores that would be partnerships owned by local car dealers and Ford.

“If you ask any Ford or Lincoln-Mercury dealer who the competition is, they will tell you it’s other Ford dealers. If all the dealers are together in a partnership, they are collectively competing against the real competition [other car companies] rather than each other,” Ochs said.

Steve Shuken, owner of Vista Ford and Vista Lincoln-Mercury in Woodland Hills, said that although he didn’t know anything about a Boeckmann-led consolidation, he didn’t like the idea.

“After 25 years, I think we pretty well know our customers. And I think they like doing business with us in the shape and form we’re currently in. Our customers do not want to be associated with a huge conglomerate,” Shuken said.

In recent months, Ford has tried and failed to get car dealers in Salt Lake City and Indianapolis to band together into a partnership.

It’s part of Ford’s experimental campaign to get dealers to pool resources, cut advertising costs, set up separate sales and service locations with fewer dealerships, but to stock those with much bigger car inventories, and perhaps with no-haggle prices.

Much of this is inspired by billionaire Wayne Huizenga’s buying spree of about 200 new-car dealerships in the past year.

Huizenga made part of his fortune by building up the Blockbuster video chain. Now his Republic Industries is attempting to overhaul the fragmented car dealership business by building a network of mass-marketed, superstore car dealerships, including a chain of AutoNation USA used cars.

“The way the car business operated all these years is changing,” said Donald Keithley, a partner and auto retail analyst at J.D. Power & Associates, an Agoura Hills research firm. “If the auto industry can’t figure out a way to try some of these new things, outsiders are going to do it for them,” he said.

Keithley said Boeckmann, “is a very progressive dealer and he’s very successful.”

Boeckmann’s dealerships sell Saturn, Ford, Lincoln-Mercury and Jaguar brands and last year sold more than 20,000 vehicles.

Ochs said that though Ford wants to set up partnership groups in several cities, it “is completely voluntary. If dealers in any one market want to go along, fine. It’s not a hostile takeover.”

In such a partnership, one dealer would probably be the chief executive, although all dealers who banded together would own a share of the operation, based on the value for each franchise, Ochs said. If some local dealers wanted to retire, Ford would then buy them out, he said.

One reason that Ford’s partnership effort apparently failed in Indianapolis and Salt Lake City is that its buyout offers weren’t high enough. Huizenga’s buying spree has roughly doubled the value of some car dealerships.

Robert Bruncati, who heads Metro Ford in North Hollywood and Sunrise Ford in Tujunga, said that consolidating local Ford dealerships “doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m not saying there couldn’t be a plan down the road. But nobody’s approached me.”