Birchwood Automotive Group has acquired Winnipeg Dodge Chrysler located in the Birchwood-owned Pointe West Auto Park, giving Birchwood ownership of all eight dealerships that represent 14 manufacturers in the park.
It becomes Birchwood’s 18th Winnipeg dealership and 24th overall for what is the largest auto dealership network in the province.
The acquisition ends a long-standing relationship Birchwood has had with the Chrysler Dodge dealership.
It was purchased from Calgary-based McManes Automotive, who had acquired Westport Chrysler Dodge from Ron Eisbrenner in 2006. (McManes merged Winnipeg Dodge, which was on Ellice Avenue at the time, with Westport at its Pointe West location.)
In 2009 Birchwood acquired Orion Chevrolet owned by Carl Eisbrenner, Ron’s brother, merging it with Birchwood’s Pontiac Buick dealership to form Birchwood Chevrolet Buick GMC. (That was during GM’s American bankruptcy proceedings that resulted in the end of the Pontiac line.)
Steve Chipman, president of Birchwood, said while Winnipeg Dodge had been operating as the only non-Birchwood owned entity at Pointe West, there had always been a good relationship.
“We got along well with Winnipeg Dodge,” said Chipman. “There was some constraints, for instance when there were activities for the whole park but there was never a problem. But it did hold you back a bit.”
In addition to the dealership, Birchwood also acquired Winnipeg Collision, Winnipeg Chrysler’s body shop, located a little further west on Portage Avenue from Pointe West.
“It gives us that much more capacity in the body shop market,” said Chipman.
Chipman said additional dealerships provide synergy for Birchwood for marketing campaigns. As well, the company operates a call centre for followup calls for its service departments and general customer contact. Adding another dealership does not incur much additional expense.
The newly named Birchwood Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram joins Birchwood’s other Pointe West stores that sell Honda, Kia, Volvo, Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, BMW-MINI, Nissan, Infiniti, and Toyota as well as its Collision Centres, and Birchwood Credit also located at the auto park.
It’s the first acquisition in about four years when Birchwood acquired some rural Manitoba dealerships in Virden and Roblin. The group also owns two dealerships in Saskatchewan, one on Steinbach (a Dodge Chrysler store) and one in Cavalier, North Dakota, the closest American auto dealership to the Canadian border in the region.
Chipman said the passage of time since the last acquisition has a lot to do with the disruption of the pandemic and ensuing supply chain issues that the automakers have been struggling with.
Manufacturers allocate specific numbers of new vehicles to dealerships based on their three-year average sales numbers.
But the manufacturers also make allocation decisions based on inventory that the dealership has.
Birchwood is currently holding a “liquidation” sale of Winnipeg Chrysler’s inventory. Chipman said that’s a way to move out older inventory to make allocation space for the dealership to be able to order more new vehicles.
Chipman said the company still has a desire to grow, but the mergers and acquisitions market in the auto industry is competitive with many large groups like Birchwood aggressively consolidating the industry.
Although it has been a few years since its last acquisition, Birchwood has been busy. It built a new Volkswagen dealership on Regent Avenue, relocated Jaguar and Lexus dealerships and renovated its Toyota and Volvo dealerships in the last two years.
And after having to temporarily lay off a few hundred employees at the beginning of the pandemic, Chipman said employment totals are back to pre-pandemic levels.
Martin Cash
Reporter
Martin Cash has been writing a column and business news at the Free Press since 1989. Over those years he’s written through a number of business cycles and the rise and fall (and rise) in fortunes of many local businesses.
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