Tampa's Morgan Automotive adds country's No. 2 Kia dealership to growing roster

The Morgan Automotive Group, one of the largest car dealership owners in the country, has bought Hollywood Kia in South Florida.

The Hollywood store is the No. 2 Kia dealership in the country in terms of volume, with 4,342 new vehicles sold last year and 1,582 sold through May of this year.

Alan Haig, president of Haig Partners, the brokerage that represented the sellers and announced the sale, says in an email that a price cannot be disclosed. “The parties requested that information be kept confidential.”

But in a statement announcing the deal, Haig Partners says executives for the automaker called it “a record for the most blue-sky value ever paid for a Kia dealership.”

(In the automobile industry blue sky value is the intangible values, such as reputation, along with the value of the assets.)

For Tampa-based Morgan, the new store gives it an even stronger hold on the South Florida automobile sales market where it now owns 17 dealerships across Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

That includes nine dealerships from around Miami it bought in January several months after it had bought Genesis of Kendall and Kendall Hyundai. (Kendall is a Miami suburb.)

In all, Morgan now owns 77 dealerships — all in Florida. The industry publication Automotive News has ranked it No. 8 on its list of the Top 150 Dealership groups. In 2023, it generated over $8 billion in revenue and retailed 162,000 vehicles through 67 dealerships. 

As for Hollywood Kia, the store was owned by Joe Levy and Steve Gutstein.

Levy bought the Kia franchise in 2008 at a time that the car maker was beginning to make inroads in the U.S., seeing its market share grow from 3% in 2010 to 5% in 2023, Haig Partners says in a statement.

Gutstein became a partner in 2019 and, according to the statement, will remain with the company.