Andy Guelcher on April 29 acquired Cadillac of Englewood Cliffs in New Jersey. The acquisition fulfilled two of Guelcher’s longtime goals: to own a Cadillac store and to go into business with a longtime friend.
“I’ve tried to purchase other Cadillac stores to no avail,” Guelcher told WardsAuto on a Zoom call, “so this is something I’ve kind of been on the hunt for.”
He partnered with a good friend since college (and the best man at Guelcher’s wedding), Jonathan Williams, to buy the store. Williams, who works in private equity but invested in the dealership as an individual, is a minority partner and won’t be involved in running the store, Guelcher said.
The Cadillac store is Guelcher’s second dealership; he also owns Mohawk Chevrolet in Ballston Spa, New York, a small city in Saratoga County in northeastern New York State. Mohawk Chevrolet is one of the top Chevy dealers nationwide – in 2024 it was named Dealer of the Year by General Motors.
Bought out of bankruptcy
That kind of recognition from the manufacturer of Guelcher’s ability as an operator played an important role in his acquisition of the Cadillac store.
Guelcher bought the Cadillac store out of bankruptcy directly from General Motors.
“We do really well with Chevrolet up here, so we had the support of General Motors to do this,” Guelcher said, “and yeah, that’s how we found out about it.”
Now, Guelcher must roll up his sleeves and get to work building back the store’s business. He promoted the general manager of Mohawk Chevrolet to executive manager at the Cadillac store. He plans to hire six additional managers. Three have already been hired, Guelcher said.
Hiring additional staff will be helped by the dealership’s location. Englewood Cliffs is part of the New York City metroplex, with access to a market of some 8.5 million people, according to Guelcher.
“Because of the size of the market, the talent pool’s a little bit deeper, so there’s more qualified applicants,” Guelcher said. “So that has been refreshing and we’re filling positions pretty quickly.”
Mobile service bonanza
Because it was bankrupt, the dealership was doing minimal business and there was basically nowhere to go but up. On the new-car side, “we were able to get GM to make sure we had sufficient support inventory-wise to get started,” Guelcher said.
The Cadillac brand is positioned very well, Guelcher said, “and I think there’s enough current product that’s super, super popular, and I see that getting better over the next five, six, seven years.”
On the fixed operations side, the image-compliant dealership facility has 30 service bays, so “what’s available shop space-wise and bay-wise is certainly more than enough for our needs up front,” Guelcher said. He has five service technicians but figures they need to hire around 15 more. “We will do that over the course of a few months,” he said.
Guelcher sees huge opportunities in mobile service. That optimism is informed by his experience with mobile service at Mohawk Chevrolet.
The dealership has established a relationship with Global Foundries, a large semiconductor manufacturer with a manufacturing site a few miles from the dealership. They provide mobile service to employees there during working hours.
Guelcher figures Englewood Cliffs is awash with such opportunities, given that the headquarters of electronics giant LG, Samsung and CNBC, among others, are in the area.
If his people can get permission from the HR departments at those corporations to work with employees, he will create a process where their cars can be serviced while they are at work and they pay by text. “We’ve proven it worked really well, and customers really like that,” Guelcher said.
Just go do it
Mohawk Chevrolet is nearly three hours from Englewood Cliffs. That might seem like too big a leap for some small dealers like himself, but they shouldn’t be fearful of such a move, Guelcher said.
“Dealers or potential dealers my size, smaller guys like me, get maybe a little bit nervous about getting out of your geographical area of responsibility because it’s far, then go into a metro market and competing,” he said.
Just hold people accountable and build a good culture, Guelcher said. “You don’t need to be fearful or scared to do it. You just gotta, just go do it.”
