McDonald Toyota, a Littleton-based automotive dealership, has acquired two dealerships from Greeley-based Ehrlich Motors.
The acquisition includes Ehrlich Toyota of Greeley and Fort Morgan, and the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram store in Fort Morgan. Ehrlich’s Toyota of Laramie dealership in Laramie, Wyo., was not part of the deal; nor was the I-25 Kia dealership at Longmont, which Ehrlich owns together with Phil Marzolf.
Ehrlich CEO Scott Ehrlich said he had not been looking to sell, but the opportunity presented itself.
“I would say this: In my career, things just happened, you know? I tried to make good long-term decisions, but sometimes an opportunity comes along, and you just decide to do it,” Ehrlich said, adding, “I had a good buyer.”
Ehrlich said he would retain ownership of I-25 Kia and Toyota of Laramie.
Buyer of the Greeley and Fort Morgan dealerships was McDonald Holdings Inc., which does business as McDonald Automotive Group.
Like Ehrlich Motors, the McDonald dealerships were formed in the 1940s by the grandfather of the company’s current president, Michael McDonald. The family originally operated in New Mexico and moved operations to the Denver area in 1964. Prior to the Ehrlich purchase, the company operated Volvo, Mazda, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Genesis and Audi dealerships, most in the Littleton area. It opened a boutique Polestar electric car store in Cherry Creek this month. Polestar is Volvo’s entry into the EV market.
“We’re excited about this market,” said Steve Powers, vice president of operations for the McDonald Group. Powers will serve as interim general manager at the dealerships it just acquired until the company settles on its management structure. He said that longtime Ehrlich general manager John Motschall will stay on with the company.
“We had opportunities in southern Colorado, but we chose Northern Colorado for a bunch of reasons,” Powers said. “The demographics are strong.”
Powers said the company “has aspirations for other dealerships” in the region and is working on potential deals right now.
Ehrlich said McDonald represented a good fit with the Ehrlich culture.
“They’re a good family that has a lot of similar values as I do, I believe,” he said. “But they have a fourth generation coming into the business, and none of my kids were interested. They still have the future generation coming in, and I didn’t.”
Ehrlich’s automotive history in the Greeley area dates back to 1946, when Reuben “Swede” Ehrlich founded Swede’s Repair Shop in LaSalle. That eventually evolved into a chain of dealerships, with Swede’s sons, Scott and Stan, taking over the family business in the early 1980s.
“He (Swede) became a new-car dealer in 1963, with Datsun, and the reason is, he couldn’t afford a mainstream dealership, and nobody knew what Datsun was,” Ehrlich said. “That’s how he was fortunate enough to get a new-car dealership, and then it became a good asset, and I was fortunate enough to be able to find other opportunities and start redeploying my capital.”
Ehrlich said he’s completed a dozen buy-sell agreements over the years, selling some dealerships and acquiring others.
“I’m not new to buying and selling,” he said. “Basically, I’ve done a number of buying and selling. I wasn’t always a buyer, and I wasn’t always a seller. And I certainly didn’t stay in one place.”
Ehrlich has become known in Greeley and Northern Colorado for his philanthropic endeavors, including founding the College Promise scholarship program.
“I think it was sort of the fabric of the community in Greeley, and especially some of the people that I was around. It was the right thing to do,” he said. “I think it’s good to give back.”
Ehrlich received the Northern Colorado Business Report’s Bravo! Entrepreneur award in 2002, was named a Weld County Distinguished Citizen by the Boy Scouts of America Longs Peak Council in 2013 and was inducted into the Colorado Automotive Hall of Fame in 2015, among other honors.
He said the sale of the two dealerships to McDonald does not mean he’s retiring.
“What is retirement?” Ehrlich said. “I’m not sure where everything is going to take me. I’m 59 years old. I don’t know how much … I don’t think I want to take as much risk as I’ve taken in the past, but I know that I’ll probably continue to want to exploit the right opportunities.”
But Ehrlich said that is not likely to include another purchase.
“More likely, no,” he said. “I mean, I’m not going to say ‘no,’ but at my age, I’m really not trying to break new ground.”
Ehrlich expressed gratitude to Ehrlich’s customers and employees over the years.
“I feel so blessed to have been in Northern Colorado, and I truly thank all of our customers and all of our employees,” he said. “It’s tough. I’m no longer going to be part of the Greeley or Northern Colorado market, and it’s been a great, great place to be, and I’m just really thankful for everybody I’ve been able to work with over the years.”
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