Savannah’s automobile dealership community features many familiar family names.
The name Gregory may lack the local cache of Vaden, Lewis or Critz, but the newest car dealer in town is a household name around the state.
Columbus car dealer Carl Gregory recently bought Savannah’s Chrysler franchise, Hoover Chrysler Jeep Dodge. Gregory owns 14 other dealerships representing nine manufacturers in several small markets in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. Ten of those dealerships are in Georgia, including one in Brunswick.
“We like the demographics in Savannah and that size market, and we’ve had success with the Chrysler brand on the coast in Brunswick,” Gregory said. “When the opportunity came up, we decided we couldn’t pass it up.”
Gregory took over the Savannah dealership the last week in August. Details of his deal with the business’s former owner, David Hoover, were undisclosed, but it was a “seven-figure sale” and a “good deal is a good deal for everybody,” said Gregory, whose relationship with the Hoover family dates back 25 years.
Hoover declined comment when contacted and did not share his future plans.
Hoover owned the dealership, located at the corner of Abercorn Street and Montgomery Crossroad, for a decade. Bob Maddox previously held the Chrysler franchise in Savannah.
Gregory started in auto sales in the early 1980s and opened his first dealership in 1989 in Columbus. He’s since grown his business, Carl Gregory Enterprises, to be among the top 100 dealership groups in the United States, according to National Automobile Dealers Association statistics.
Gregory takes a customer-first approach to business and strives to “treat people the way you want to be treated.
“The quality of cars is so similar today, the only thing that sets dealers apart is the quality of service after the sale,” he said. “It’s easy to sell you a car. The hard part happens after the sale. The only thing we have is our reputation.”
Gregory said he will launch a $1 million renovation of his Savannah dealership in the coming weeks. Plans calls for a new facade on the building, a repaving of the lot and an expanded display area along Montgomery Crossroad.