As accelerated dealership consolidation reshapes the auto retail landscape, Automotive News‘ annual ranking of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S. is changing, too.
The groups on the list commanded a bigger percentage of the U.S. industry’s new light-vehicle sales in 2022 and held a growing share of the U.S. dealership count, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center, which compiles the list. As those groups got larger, they also performed better than the industry as a whole in a year that saw overall new-car sales decline. The top 150 recorded a collective new-vehicle sales decline far narrower than the decline in overall U.S. light-vehicle sales.
This annual list usually has no surprise at the top — AutoNation Inc. has been No. 1 since 1997. But that’s different this year as deal-making juggernaut Lithia Motors blew past rival AutoNation to sit at the top of the ranking.