Sunny Rathore had no meetings on his calendar at last year’s National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers conference. A scheduling error wiped his slate clean. So he did what any hungry dealership employee would do after a decade of waiting: he walked into the room where Nissan was holding meetings uninvited.
That cold call turned into a Nissan dealership.
North Austin Nissan opened August 1 with Rathore as dealer principal and 51% owner. His employer, Continental Automotive Group, holds the minority stake, bankrolled a $5 million temporary facility, and committed to building a permanent showroom. The arrangement is unusual in an industry where first-time buyers typically scrape together financing from outside investors or family money, not from the group that signs their paychecks.
The opening exists because Group 1 Automotive decided to close its North Austin Nissan store and convert it to a Hyundai franchise. Group 1 already had two other Nissan dealerships in the Austin market and apparently didn’t see the need for a third. Rathore saw it differently. Thousands of Nissan vehicles were in operation in north Austin with no nearby dealer to service them.
He pitched that gap to the Nissan reps he’d just met. They initially said no. He kept pushing. A month later, the phone rang.
Rathore’s path to ownership was anything but overnight. He spent six or seven years applying for open points with various manufacturers, always finishing second. CAG executive Genny Hill said the group had committed to backing Rathore after he turned around their Subaru store’s sales and service numbers, but the right opportunity never materialized.
“There were points where we were just like, are we ever going to get one?” Rathore said.
Nissan interviewed three candidates for the north Austin point. Two requirements tipped the scales in Rathore’s favor: the new store had to sit within two miles of the old location, and it had to open within a year. CAG owned land next to its First Texas Honda store that fit the geography, and it had a building nearby that could be converted into a temporary facility fast.
That kind of infrastructure commitment is hard for a solo first-timer to match.
The partnership model CAG used here deserves attention. Rather than losing a talented general manager to a competitor or an independent venture, the group kept Rathore in its orbit by giving him equity and operational support while retaining him as part of the family. It is a retention strategy disguised as a real estate deal.
Rathore’s 11-year-old son Everest, born with Apraxia, a neurological condition that delayed his speech until age six or seven, now carries a business card identifying him as CEO of North Austin Nissan. Father and son made a pact years ago: “We would both do hard things.”
The plan going forward is to install a general manager at the Nissan store once operations stabilize, freeing Rathore to pursue more acquisitions in partnership with CAG. Texas is the priority geography.
“Like most people, I would like to be a Toyota dealer,” Rathore said. The line between second place and first turned out to be one unscheduled afternoon and a room he wasn’t supposed to walk into.
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