Texas dealership buys Dave Smith Auto Group

A fast-growing Texas car dealership has purchased Dave Smith Auto Group with plans to spread the successful Kellogg-based company’s brand throughout the Northwest.

The deal with RFJ Auto Partners Inc. of Plano, Texas, closed April 20, and the Smith family principals will lead a northern group of dealerships from their North Idaho headquarters.

“We’ve been working a long time on trying to expand the Dave Smith Motors line,” said Ken Smith, who will serve as president of the new group, RFJ Northern Holdings, and the principal dealer for all stores it acquires.

“I’ll be out buying dealerships and starting them up with the Dave Smith philosophy,” said Smith, whose father started the company in 1965 selling Chevrolets in Wallace.

He said he’ll look to buy any car franchise in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, and possibly Alaska and Hawaii.

“We’re planning on buying every major automotive line, starting this year with everything but the high lines, and probably next year we’ll be getting into Mercedes, Audi,” Smith said.

“We’d like to purchase 20 to 30 stores, but it will just depend on how it goes,” he added.

Smith expects to buy mostly other independently owned businesses to fold into RFJ.

“In the car industry a lot of people lack the ability to find a way to get out someday, to retire,” he said. “Maybe they don’t have a sibling that wants to go into the car business, and so this allows them a way to get out, or in my case to keep working with me.”

RFJ formed in February 2014 with financial backing from New York-based private equity firm Jordan Co.

Under the direction of auto industry veteran Rick Ford, RFJ has grown to 24 dealerships in Texas and Alabama.

Ford told Automotive News he expects RFJ will rank among the 20 largest dealership groups by the end of the year and “ultimately end up in the top 10 before it’s all said and done.”

Dave Smith operates two of the highest-volume stores in the nation. The Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram and Chevrolet-Cadillac-Buick-GMC stores in Kellogg sold 9,298 new vehicles last year. The company for years has been the world’s largest Ram truck dealer and the Northwest’s largest GM dealer.

Smith said RFJ’s acquisition will have no effect on the Kellogg stores, “other than there will be more opportunities for the 600-plus employees I have to move out or move up in the organization.”

His siblings, Eric Smith and Michelle Dahl, will continue to serve as his partners in the business.