Putnam Automotive Dealer Group of Burlingame, Calif., added Honda to its growing portfolio of brands in mid August when it purchased Primo Honda in San Carlos, Calif.
The transaction closed Aug. 18 after the owners of Primo Honda sold the dealership’s property to a real estate development company which plans to construct a large life sciences building on the site, said Andrey Kamenetsky, Putnam’s group operations manager, in an email to Automotive News.
San Carlos is about 25 miles south of San Francisco.
Putnam will move the store, renamed Honda of San Carlos, less than a mile away in San Carlos effective Dec. 1, Kamenetsky said. The store will operate out of modular buildings while a new facility is built, he said.
“We had to (quickly) find a suitable replacement property in the same city in a tight real estate market and found a similar two-plus acre site less than a mile away from the current location that met Honda’s market requirements,” Kamenetsky said in the email.
Primo Honda sellers were the dealership’s general manager David Meese and partner Jeff Qvale, said Mike Toth, a partner in Haig Partners, a buy-sell firm in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which represented the sellers in the transaction.
Putnam is a family-owned and operated dealership group dating to 1965 when Joe Putnam opened a Buick dealership in Burlingame. Putnam sells 20 vehicle brands from more than a dozen dealerships and also operates a service-only Subaru location in San Francisco, according to its website.
