Growth was in the cards for Bob Rohrman

In 1969, Bob Rohrman was selling used cars from a tiny building on the highway bypass outside Lafayette, Ind., when he spotted a yellow Toyota Corona in a magazine ad.

"I'd been looking for a new-car franchise and heard they were selling well in California," Rohrman, 76, recalls. "So I called the 800 number in the ad, and a month later I was selling Toyotas."

His used-car operation was a gravel lot with strings of light bulbs. Back then, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. didn't object to sharing space. "It was a nice gravel lot," Rohrman deadpans.

That turning point led, more than four decades later, to Bob Rohrman Auto Group, the 15th-largest U.S. dealership group. The group sells 11 brands at 36 dealerships in Indiana and Illinois.

Rohrman is still going strong. He has added seven dealerships in the past year. "I am actively acquiring," he says.

He bought a Ford dealership in Schaumburg, Ill., from AutoNation Inc. His own Honda store across the street will move to a new showroom on 11 acres nearby, and he will refurbish the current dealership for an existing Kia franchise. And Rohrman has new showrooms about to open in Indiana that will convert some dual stores into single-franchise operations.

Rohrman says growth opportunities are plentiful now -- if you can finance a deal.

A lot of dealers, especially domestic ones, "now say it's time to sell, even though the price is not what it was," he says. "A lot are willing to sell for a hell of a lot less these days."

Some dealers are retiring. Others are downsizing voluntarily. Still others will sell because they can't get enough operating capital, he says.

"Banks are getting tough on floorplanning, saying, 'Yeah, we'll still floorplan you, but only for $1 million,' " Rohrman says. "Well, these days, a million doesn't buy many cars."

Rohrman can make deals because he's self-funding and didn't divert his auto profits into other lines of business.

"I can pay for these properties because I saved the money I made in the car business the last 50 years," he says.

The flurry of activity moved his operation up to No. 15, from No. 22, on Automotive News' list of the Top 125 Dealership Groups this year, with 17,372 new retail units sold. It was the only group in the top 20 to boost both new retail unit sales and revenue in 2009. Rohrman's operation grossed $735.2 million last year.

Spotting the Toyota Corona ad was just one of several turning points in Rohrman's career.

He was the ninth of 11 children, toward the bottom of the hand-me-down list in Lafayette. "My father was a carpenter," he remembers. "We always had enough food to eat, but we only had meat on Sundays."

Rohrman's first turning point came during World War II. His parents had moved to northern Wisconsin with their three youngest children. But when his father became sick after building Army barracks on Attu in Alaska's Aleutian Islands, Rohrman, then 13, was shipped back to Lafayette to live with an older sister's family.

His brother-in-law, a poker player in his off-hours, taught young Rohrman the card skills that later would fund his start in business.

Another crucial moment came during high school. At 16, he got a job working the afternoon shift at Brown Rubber Co. and started leaving school early. V.D. Montgomery, the dean of boys, called him in. "He said, 'I know you have to work, but if you miss afternoons, you're not going to graduate'," Rohrman recalls.

Says Rohrman: "So I got myself transferred" to the graveyard shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and graduated.

In 1955, after a stint in the Army, Rohrman returned to Lafayette and hired on as a salesman for the local Ford dealer, Glenn Pitman. After eight years as general manager, he opened his used-car operation, using poker winnings from his Army days.

In 1977, Rohrman was running his upgraded Toyota store when a split-second decision turned him into a multiple-franchise operator -- and taught him a store strategy he still follows.

"A Honda guy stopped by and asked me if anyone in town wanted a store," Rohrman says. "I said, 'Me.'"

The Honda rep insisted on a separate showroom. "I said, 'How about I build a new showroom off my service department, put Toyota into that and give you this one'," Rohrman recalls. "He said, 'Deal.'"

Rohrman is still moving franchises around. Ask him about any store and he soon will be talking about plans to build another new showroom and play musical chairs to upgrade his franchise portfolio.

In 1980 Rohrman added Lincoln-Mercury to his growing northern Illinois empire when the Ford Motor Co. division let him dual it with Subaru. That same decade, he branched into suburban Chicago with a Toyota franchise. Rohrman stores now ring Chicago, counterclockwise from Gurnee and Buffalo Grove in the north to Chesterton, Ind., in the southeast.

Outgoing and always quick to laugh, Rohrman is the TV pitchman for Rohrman franchises.

"He's our star," says Stephen Allsteadt, a partner in Axiom Advertising in Schaumburg, which handles TV advertising for the group. "We've had him in costume as Cowboy Bob, Count Bobula, Doctor Bob." Generations of Chicago Cubs broadcast fans know his trademark animated lion, Leo, growling out the "Bob ROOOOHHHHR-man" tag line.

He runs his empire, which includes Indiana dealerships in Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Lafayette and Chesterton, with a small management team. He is rarely in his Lafayette office. He prefers to hit the road, driving from dealership to dealership for monthly meetings with department heads at each store.

"We go over the last month: new, used, grosses, new and used leases, Internet, F&I, service, parts," he says. "We compare to plan and then set goals for the next month."

He acknowledges his system can break down. "I don't watch a clock," he says. "The first meeting of the day starts on time. The next one starts when I get there."

The hectic pace has its downside. Rohrman has three ex-wives.

None of his five children work for him. But two of his 16 grandchildren work at the Schaumburg Honda store.

"The grandkids are the ones that will take over -- in 30 or 35 years," he quips.

But Rohrman turns serious to discuss how he can operate a 1,200-employee company from his perpetual road trip.

"It's the people," he says. "You've got to have good people."

He praises the abilities of longtime employees, from top aides John Barrett and Craig Gibson and his various general managers to technicians who started with him back in the 1960s.

In 2007, Rohrman gave back to Lafayette and the school from which he almost didn't graduate. He donated $3.5 million toward a $9 million addition to Jefferson High School.

"I always kind of wanted to play the saxophone, but there was no option back then," Rohrman says. "I thought students ought to have a chance to do something in school besides play sports."

Last fall he sang at the dedication of the Bob Rohrman Center for Performing Arts.