Diehl Automotive Group on March 31 acquired two dealerships in Wooster, Ohio, as well as an off-site collision center from from Firelands Automotive Group, adding to a string of acquisitions accelerating the group’s growth this year.
The acquisition of Firelands Toyota of Wooster and Firelands Volkswagen of Wooster — which will now operate under the Diehl banner — are the second and third dealerships the automotive group has acquired in the past four months, President and CEO Corina Diehl told WardsAuto on a Zoom Call. In December, the group acquired McElwain Motor Car Company in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania.
The purchases bring the group’s total number of rooftops to 24 with 33 franchises representing 13 different brands.
The secret behind rapid growth
Diehl attributes the ability to absorb so many acquisitions in a short period of time to having a solid management structure. “I have a great team of directors now,” Diehl said.
It wasn’t always that way.
“I remember, we never had directors — you know, go back five years, we were doing all that work.”
The group has directors at the corporate level handling fixed ops, sales, collision and finance, as well as parts directors at different dealerships. Adding the corporate structure “has made my life a lot simpler,” Diehl said.
Her son Matt is a group vice president, as well. He has a law degree, an MBA and is a CPA, and analyzes potential acquisitions, she said.
Indeed, Matt Diehl in the past three years has become “the driving force in spending my money,” Corina Diehl joked.
She no longer is the one approaching dealers about selling, Diehl said. Matt is the one looking for acquisition targets now. When he finds a store to acquire, she and her son review the financial and other materials together before deciding whether to make an offer, Diehl said.
“He’s doing such a great job at it that I don’t have to deal with it anymore,” she said.
With the exception of Cadillac, all of Diehl Auto Group’s franchises are volume brands. And while they aren’t finished expanding, they’ll stick with the volume brands.
“I may have to sell more in service, but I’ll have more customers” Diehl said of volume franchises. Luxury stores are too expensive in comparison, according to Diehl.
“The highlines, I can’t get them to pencil,” Diehl said. “I’d rather buy three more Chevy stores or a Kia store.”
Diehl’s plans for the new dealerships
“We see huge potential in the Toyota and Volkswagen stores,” Diehl said.
They will add sales staff in a few months, she said, but the first task was switching the stores from the CDK dealer management system to the Tekion DMS, which the Diehl group uses.
As is the case with most acquisitions, the Diehl group will also implement its own operating processes in the new stores. It brought in a new general manager, an employee from one of its other stores.
“It usually takes us a good year to get our feet firmly down with our processes,” Diehl said.
That includes a focus on making staff feel valued, she said. The general managers at Diehl stores buy team lunches and Diehl gifts concert tickets to staff, as examples of how they make staff feel valued.
“I think remembering that our people are our lifeline and sometimes dealers forget that they drive everything,” Diehl said. One “sad part” about expanding as a group is that she no longer knows every staffer’s birthday, Diehl said.
Why Diehl also bought a collision center
In a separate transaction, the Diehl group also acquired an off-site collision center from Firelands. Diehl Automotive Group now owns 11 collision centers.
“We are really good with the collision business,” Diehl said.
Collision centers can be a profitable business for dealerships, but they are very different from running a dealership service department or even a body shop within a dealership, Rob Lee, owner of Blue Sky Advisors, a buy-sell consultancy, told WardsAuto on a phone call.
Not all dealership buyers are interested in acquiring collision repair centers, Lee said, because a collision center is a stand-alone, sophisticated operation. Even body shops, which are part of a dealership’s parts department, aren’t popular with all buyers, he said.
“For the most part, car dealers don’t understand the body shop business to begin with,” Lee said, and a collision center is a typically “lot better-invested business.”
Indeed, according to the NADA Data 2025 Report, the number of dealerships with body shops is declining. In 2025, 34% of franchised dealers had body shops, down from 39.3% in 2018.
Diehl Automotive Group, however, is all-in on collision repair. “I am always looking for collision centers,” Diehl said. They are a profitable business line for the group, she said in an email. “They do well.”
One key to their success is that one of her directors “is a great collision guy,” partly because “he has formed fabulous relationships with the insurance companies,” Diehl said.
They also invest a lot in training their collision technicians, she said. For example, “a new painter training takes months,” Diehl said. “We send them to classes and give them a mentor.”
They also guarantee all their work. “Telling a customer a lie goes nowhere,” Diehl said. “I am such a firm believer in accountability.”
