In April, the dealership group in a statement “vehemently denied any wrongdoing.” The group said it “reluctantly determined” to settle the case “to avoid the disruption of an ongoing dispute with the government.”
“This settlement is the result of a three-year process where we provided complete transparency to the government,” the statement said. “Most of its claims were based on interpretations of statistical data and there was no actual finding of intentional wrongdoing.”
The FTC is cracking down on junk fees and discriminatory practices that harm Black and Latino consumers, Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement in October.
Passport Automotive Group, also the subject of a multimillion-dollar FTC lawsuit, agreed in October to pay $3.4 million to settle. The FTC alleged it charged illegal fees and discriminated against Black and Latino customers. Passport said in a statement it denies the FTC’s findings “in the strongest possible terms” but that fighting the charges in court would take too long, be too costly and “ultimately would have distracted us from the important work we do.”
Passport, a family-owned business, started in 1991 and has nine stores in Virginia and Maryland selling BMW, Infiniti, Mazda, Mini, Nissan and Toyota vehicles.
Napleton Automotive ranks No. 13 on Automotive News’ most recent list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., retailing 38,848 new vehicles in 2021.
