All-Stars

In a bustling era of dealership consolidation, Gregg Ciocca is one of the private dealers leading the way.

Ciocca, 64 , this year shared with Automotive News his ambition to double his store count to 50 within five years.

And in 2022, he made significant progress toward that goal.

Ciocca, CEO of his namesake Allentown, Pa., group, bought one dealership in both June and July in New Jersey before making one of the year's most noteworthy acquisitions.

In August, Ciocca, in its largest acquisition to date, bought Flemington Car & Truck Country, the New Jersey group founded by the late Steve Kalafer. Kalafer was a prominent dealer known for speaking out against stair-step incentives and other automaker programs he thought disadvantaged auto retailers.

Acquiring Flemington Car & Truck Country, including six dealerships with domestic, import and luxury brands, bolstered Ciocca's presence in the Garden State, added a handful of brands to the group's portfolio and pushed Ciocca's store count to 34. Ciocca said his group's annual sales are tracking toward $2 billion following the Flemington acquisition, nearly double the $1.1 billion in annual revenue the group reported in Automotive News' most recent list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., where it ranked No. 83, retailing 12,080 new vehicles last year.

But the Flemington transaction meant more than all of that to Ciocca, who had a relationship with Kalafer and Kalafer's two sons, who sold him the dealerships.

"It was really two family businesses that just shook hands very quickly," Ciocca told Automotive News at the time. "They wanted a good family to take over their great family business. So I felt very privileged and fortunate they chose me and my Ciocca family, my three sons, to be the stewards of that business, which is a high-performing dealer group."