Dwayne Lane’s Family of Auto Centers is getting even bigger.
Just months after the Everett-based car dealership opened a new Chevrolet car lot at Island Crossing, it’s buying three more dealerships in Skagit County: Skagit Subaru, Mazda and Ford-Lincoln. The seller is D.J. Tapley of the Tapley Family Auto Group.
All three car lots are located at the I-5 Auto World at exit 229 in Burlington.
“We’re growing and growing again,” said Tom Lane, president of Dwayne Lane. “Opportunity knocked on the door and we opened it.”
The dealerships will be renamed Dwayne Lane’s Skagit Subaru, Dwayne Lane’s Skagit Mazda and Dwayne Lane’s Skagit Ford-Lincoln.
It was a right-time, right-place situation for Lane. Tapley, who had owned the dealerships with his father, Don, since 1987, is retiring and getting out of the car business.
“I wasn’t looking to expand, but the gentleman who was retiring has been a friend of mine for years,” Lane said. “It was on his timing and we figured something out.”
He declined to say how much he paid for the stores, saying they entered into a non-disclosure agreement: “He’s happy and I’m happy.”
The addition of the three new Skagit stores expands Dwayne Lane’s auto dealerships to six locations representing nine new-car franchises in Everett, Arlington, Sedro-Woolley and Burlington.
Lane said the company will keep all 72 employees at the newly acquired dealerships. That brings the total number of employees who work at Lane dealerships up to 240.
On Wednesday, Lane was showing the new locations to his father, company founder Dwayne Lane. The elder Lane, 80, hasn’t been actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the business for years, but he wanted to meet the new employees.
“This is another 70 people to meet and another 70 people to make friends with,” Tom Lane said of his dad. “His goal is to have as much fun as he can until he can’t. He loves this kind of stuff.”
Lane is a big fan of the new stores, which he said have been successful over the years. The three stores are located at I-5 Auto World, which opened in the 1970s and has a total of eight dealerships on site.
With this acquisition, Lane purchased three of the four stores at Auto World that front I-5, giving the new lots great exposure to freeway traffic.
Dwayne Lane’s first ventured north to Skagit County in 2013 when the business purchased the Ford dealership in Sedro-Woolley. With this acquisition, Lane adds new brands, including Lincoln and Japanese brands Subaru and Mazda.
His company now has more than 1,500 new and used cars on stock at any given time as well as the parts and service departments and a full-service auto body and collision center.
He said the acquisition will offer an economy of scale that should help his business and his customers.
“I’m going to jump at the chance at something that I think makes us that much stronger,” Lane said.
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