Expanding Morgan Auto Group of Tampa, Fla., has purchased a collection of seven luxury and import dealerships in Tampa, marking its largest acquisition yet based on number of stores.
Morgan Auto, one of the largest dealership groups in the country, on Tuesday bought Reeves Import Motorcars from Vivian Reeves, who retired, Morgan Auto CEO Brett Morgan said.
“For us this is the most meaningful acquisition that we’ve made, especially in the sense that it doubles the number of luxury rooftops,” Morgan told Automotive News. “It’s in our hometown. They’re people we know in a market that we know very well. It takes us to 21 total rooftops in Tampa Bay.”
Reeves Import Motorcars included Audi Tampa, Reeves BMW of Tampa, Land Rover Tampa, Maserati of Tampa, Porsche of Tampa, Reeves Subaru of Tampa and Reeves Volkswagen.
Audi, Porsche and Maserati are new brands for Morgan Auto. Acquiring those brands was a draw for the group, Morgan said, adding that buying luxury dealerships in Florida is challenging.
“If you look at the Florida footprint, some of the larger publics were here before us — AutoNation and Asbury,” Morgan said. “They have a higher penetration of luxury brands than we do. That was extremely attractive to us, especially a brand like Porsche in a metro market and Audi in a metro market.”
The collection is now known as Morgan Import Motorcars. Morgan is keeping the Audi and Land Rover store names but changed the others. The new names are: BMW of Tampa, Maserati Tampa, Porsche Tampa, Subaru of North Tampa and Volkswagen of North Tampa.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Neither party used a broker, Morgan said.
Reeves had owned the dealership group since 1971, starting out with a Volkswagen dealership.
“This was actually the third time where we kind of had conversations with Vivian about an acquisition,” Morgan said.
Morgan said Kelly Rogers, general manager of Reeves Import Motorcars, is staying on and will work with Victor Young, who will be regional platform director at Morgan Import Motorcars. Young is a partner at three other Morgan dealerships.
Morgan Auto now has 53 dealerships, all in Florida. In August, it bought Fuccillo Nissan of Clearwater from Fuccillo Automotive Group.
Larry Morgan, Brett’s father, turned a single tire shop into the 600-store Tires Plus empire, which he sold in 2001. Larry Morgan came out of retirement in 2004 and invested in Kuhn Honda-Volkswagen in Tampa. The Morgan group later purchased that store.
For about a decade, the Morgan group bought about one dealership a year. Then, in a five-year stretch from 2015 to 2020, the group acquired 32 stores.
Morgan ranks No. 11 on Automotive News‘ list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., retailing 41,842 new vehicles in 2020.
