40 Under 40

Jack Hanania Jr. knew he wanted to work for his family’s dealership group. He thought it would be as a lawyer.

Two weeks into law school, Hanania found himself in class, searching for used vehicles to purchase for Hanania Automotive Group, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based group his father founded from a single Acura dealership.

“I realized that that was not my calling,” he said of law school, “and that I wanted to just go straight into the business.”

His passion for used vehicles has contributed to his success — and propelled the group through a series of new-vehicle inventory disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the semiconductor shortage.

Hanania took a job after college on the group’s used-vehicle team and rose to become managing partner of the Chevrolet and Buick-GMC stores after they were acquired in 2019. 

Last year, after his team took the Chevy store to first from last in used-vehicle sales volume, he added another title: vice president of the 14-dealership group.

In March 2020, the group took a “calculated risk” and bought 1,000 used vehicles to sell, including 400 for Hanania’s two dealerships, and invested heavily to advertise both the vehicles and its home delivery service.

“We saw it as an opportunity to sell a bunch of used cars, because we knew we weren’t going to get any new cars in any of our stores because everything shut down,” he said.

“We got really, really, really aggressive,” he added. “When everybody was playing defense, we played offense, and it panned out for us very well.”

From 2019 to 2020, the Chevrolet and Buick-GMC stores lifted used-vehicle sales to more than 200 a month from roughly 110.

It was a playbook he replicated last September amid a softening market and rising interest rates. Hanania said he bought more than 200 used vehicles for the Chevy store and worked with his team to recondition them within 48 hours so they could turn as fast as possible.

For 2022, Jack Hanania Chevrolet’s used-vehicle sales volume was up 23 percent compared with 2021, while used-vehicle gross profit rose 19 percent, he said.

“I knew that no matter what happened, we were going to sell the cars,” he said. “Even if some weren’t as profitable as the others, we’d still be able to get a possibility to take in a trade-in and to sell and to keep another customer coming back for service.”

— Lindsay VanHulle