Expanding Midwest automotive group picks up three stores as part of the robust transaction activity early this year.
Another multigenerational auto group family has sold its stores in a deal that adds to a fast-growing collection of Midwest dealerships.
The fourth generation of the Beardmore family sold the family’s namesake Chevrolet, Hyundai and Subarus dealerships to Morrie’s Automotive Group in a transaction brokered by sell-side adviser Kerrigan Advisors.
Carey Hamilton, whose great-grandfather, Maurice “Moe” Beardmore started the family business in 1919, had led the modern group with her husband, Brian, who represented Nebraska on the National Automobile Dealers Association board of directors for 15 years.
The dealerships have served Kansas and Nebraska over the decades, including Omaha for the past 60 years.
“It is bittersweet to transition a business that has been in our family for four generations,” Carey Hamilton said. “Honoring our family’s legacy and ensuring our employees and community were well served post-sale were incredibly important to us.”
It’s at least the second Midwest auto group in business for more than a century that sold outside its founding family this year. In late February, Eich Motor Co. sold its two Minnesota dealerships, also to a growing auto group.
In Nebraska, Morrie’s Automotive now has more than 30 dealerships in the Midwest after growing gradually since its origins in 1965. The Beardmore stores are its first in Nebraska. It replaced the Beardmore brand with Morrie's Bellevue for its own brand followed by the Omaha suburb they're in.
Kerrigan Advisors is the leading sell-side advisor and thought partner to auto dealers nationwide. Since its founding in 2014, the firm has led the industry with the sale of more than 300 dealerships generating more than $10 billion in client proceeds, including two of the largest transactions in auto retail history – the sale of Jim Koons Automotive Companies to Asbury Automotive Group and Leith Automotive to Holman. The firm advises the industry’s leading dealership groups, enhancing value through the lifecycle of growing, operating and, when the time is right, selling their businesses. Led by a team of veteran industry experts with backgrounds in investment banking, private equity, accounting, finance and real estate, Kerrigan Advisors is the only firm in auto retail exclusively dedicated to sell-side advisory, providing its clients the assurance of a conflict-free approach.
Kerrigan Advisors monitors conditions in the buy/sell market and publishes an in-depth analysis each quarter in The Blue Sky Report®, the industry authority on dealership buy/sell market trends and valuations and includes Kerrigan Advisors’ signature blue sky charts, multiples and analysis for each franchise in the luxury and non-luxury segments. To download a preview of the report, click here. The firm also releases The Kerrigan Index™ comprised of the seven publicly traded auto retail companies with operations focused on the US market. The Kerrigan Auto Retail Index is designed to track dealership valuation trends, while also providing key insights into factors influencing auto retail. To access The Kerrigan Index™, click here. To read the 2024 Kerrigan Dealer Survey, click here. To read the 2025 Kerrigan OEM Survey, click here. Kerrigan Advisors also is the co-author of NADA’s Guide to Buying and Selling a Dealership.
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