Safford Automotive Group on Monday bought 16 stores in Maryland and Virginia from Brown Automotive Group, more than doubling its dealership count in the largest buy-sell transaction of 2022 so far.
The deal adds 14 franchised dealerships, one used-vehicle store and a muscle and classic car store to Safford of Springfield, Va., Safford owner James Gramm confirmed to Automotive News. The franchised stores are three Mazda locations; two Honda dealerships, two Nissan stores and two Hyundai locations, plus stores representing the Toyota, Kia, Subaru, Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram and Volkswagen brands.
It’s the largest deal tracked by Automotive News to date this year.
The executive team from Brown Automotive of Fairfax, Va., is joining Safford’s management organization, and the combined group has been renamed Safford Brown Automotive Group, Gramm said. Safford previously had a small management team, so joining forces made sense, he said.
“Combining them and using the resources to kind of fill any voids on both sides allowed us to mesh together really well,” Gramm said. “We’ll collectively be much stronger from the management side as well.”
Before the deal closed, Safford had 10 new-car dealerships and four collision shops, all in Virginia except for a BMW store and one of the collision locations, both in Owings Mills, Md.
The stores sold by Brown Automotive, which operated under the Brown’s Car Stores brand in its markets, are mostly in Virginia. The Toyota store, one of the Honda locations and the muscle and classic car store are located in Glen Burnie, Md., while the others are in the northern Virginia cities of Amherst, Arlington, Alexandria, Chantilly, Fairfax, Leesburg, Manassas, Richmond and Sterling.
