“I’m 78 years old, there’s still a lot of good people there,” Gainer told The News Herald. “I wanted to make sure it remained in good hands and my people would take care of it, and [the new owners] seemed like the people that would do it.”
Dodson said Bay Cars has an overall footprint of about 20 acres on both sides of 15th Street.
Bay Cars suffered damage from Hurricane Michael in 2018 and Gainer hadn’t rebuilt some of the properties. Dodson said the Lincoln store had essentially been wiped out by the hurricane and as a result has temporarily been sharing space with the Hyundai store.
Chief Automotive has begun construction for a new Hyundai facility and is building a new, separate Lincoln store, Dodson said, which eventually will give the group four stores in Panama City.
Dodson acknowledged that there’s a lot of activity in the buy-sell space, especially in Florida.
“The big publics are out buying,” he said. “I think that our niche is not exactly what the publics are looking for. We’re OK with a little bit of a turnaround model, or like in this situation, there’s some construction projects that need to be started right away.”
Dodson said Chief Automotive is looking to further expand.
“If you kind of look at that pyramid from Nashville, Tenn., down South and kind of along the coast, that South Central area is our acquisition target area,” Dodson said.
