Car Pros Automotive Group buys Los Angeles BMW and Mini dealerships

Washington state's Car Pros Automotive Group acquired its first luxury dealership as part of a purchase of two Los Angeles stores on Aug. 21.

The retailer bought Nick Alexander BMW and Nick Alexander Mini, from the Alexander family, according to Car Pros CEO Matthew Phillips.

"We've always wanted the opportunity to expand into luxury, if it were a Tier 1 luxury brand like BMW," Phillips told Automotive News. "But we didn't want to go into luxury solely for the sake of luxury."

The dealerships were renamed BMW of Downtown Los Angeles and Mini of Downtown Los Angeles. Phillips said Mini is also a new brand for Car Pros. The acquisition included a large collision center as well, he said, the group's first.

Car Pros last bought a dealership in November 2019, Phillips said, when the group purchased a Honda store in Southern California. Car Pros had been looking to grow, he said.

"We wanted to be very, very strategic about our next acquisition," Phillips said. "We passed on a lot of deals. It had to be the right OEM, the right location and the right size store. All of our dealerships are high-volume dealerships and that's what we're good at running. It had to be either a dealership that was high volume or had the potential to be high volume."

In December, Car Pros sold a Volkswagen dealership, also in Southern California.

Kerrigan Advisors, a sell-side firm in Incline Village, Nev., represented the Alexander family in the Los Angeles transaction, Phillips said.

Car Pros, of Renton, Wash., ranks No. 45 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., retailing 17,936 new vehicles in 2022.