Landers Buys Nelms Auto Stores

Landers of Little Rock was scheduled to complete its purchase of Nelms Auto Stores of Fayetteville on Aug. 16.

Landers was in the process of buying Nelms’ Honda, Acura and Chevrolet lines.

Don Nelms will keep his Lincoln-Mercury and Subaru lines and move them to a car lot he owns on College Avenue.

Nelms will retain ownership of the 34-acre Nelms Auto Stores car site he built at the intersection of Interstate 540 and Arkansas Highway 112, but he will lease that location to Landers.

Before the Nelms purchase, Landers had seven dealerships, most of which are near Little Rock and Memphis. Landers was purchased five years ago by United Auto Group, which had 133 dealerships in 19 states, Puerto Rico and Brazil before adding the three Nelms franchises.

Steve Landers, president of United Auto’s south central region, said he will move Landers Toyota from its location at 2337 N. Thompson St. in Springdale to the Nelms Auto Stores site.

Nelms said none of the resulting dealerships will bear his name.

Landers said the Arkansas dealerships named for him brought in about $600 million in revenue last year.

Nelms Auto Stores had about $100 million in revenue last year, making it the third-largest auto group in Northwest Arkansas behind Superior Auto Group and Lewis Auto Group. That was an increase of 12.4 percent in revenue from $89 million in 1999.

Nelms had an inventory of about 1,000 vehicles as reported in the June issue of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal.

Penske Corp. of Detroit and Penske Capital Partners together own 65 percent of the stock of United Auto.