Serra Automotive Group in June acquired its fifth Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram store in Michigan.
Its past success with the Stellantis brands was one draw. But the clincher was that the group already had the perfect person to lead the dealership, and he was just across the street.
“When we’re looking at opportunities or deals, that’s really what we look for,” Matt Serra, the group’s president, told WardsAuto on a Zoom call. “We look at the brand, the market and then, you know, what managing partner is going to run it, and do they have the team?”
That term — managing partner — is key. Serra Automotive Group has 20 dealer partners who run its 63 dealerships. As they began to grow, Serra and his father Joe, the group’s chairman, realized they needed something unique to help them attract the best management talent. Giving the dealer operators a stake in the store or stores they ran was their answer.
Such a decentralized ownership structure is rare in the retail automotive industry, Serra grants, but the key to making it work, besides good people, is giving their dealer partners freedom to run their store “their way,” Serra said.
There’s no second guessing them, and that holds true regardless of the situation, he said. Consistency is crucial.
“Whether you want to be highly decentralized or highly centralized, both can work,” Serra said. “You just gotta do what’s right for you and then you’ve got to commit, you know, you’ve got to be all-in committed on one of the directions.”
The reward for that structure is that their dealer partners “think like owners because they are owners,” he said.
CDJR upside
Serra Automotive Group, headquartered in Fenton, Michigan, has 91 automotive franchises at its 63 dealerships, representing 27 different brands. The highest concentration of dealerships is in Michigan, including all of its Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram stores, often abbreviated CDJR.
That’s in keeping with their philosophy of considering brand and market when deciding whether or not to make an acquisition, Serra said.
In terms of product portfolio, however, Stellantis, which owns the CDJR brands, is not doing so well, according to the inaugural Murphy Automotive Product Pipeline (MAPP) report.
“The product portfolio is the business,” the report says, and automakers that “consistently launch the right vehicle, in the right segment, with the right powertrain, at the right time gain market share and make money.”
Stellantis is last among major automakers on the MAPP ranking of Vehicle Redesign Rate at only 8.9%, according to a volume-rated average annual redesign rate from MY2007 to an estimated MY2026.
However, under new CEO Antonio Filosa, Stellantis in May announced FaSTLAne 2030, an aggressive five-year strategic plan that includes “sharper” brand portfolio management.
And even before the plan has an impact, sales are improving for CDJR. In the first half of 2026, Stellantis sales in the U.S. rose 4.8% year-over-year with “market share improving after several years of decline,” Cox Automotive said.
Serra Automotive has faith in the brands. It has “big expectations” for the Southfield, Michigan store, which in the past was the No.1 Chrysler store in the country by sales, Serra said.
The dealership — now called Serra CDJR Southfield — went through some hard times under previous owners Fox Motors, from whom the Serra Automotive Group acquired the dealership directly. But with the right management in place, Matt Serra is confident the store can be turned around.
“If you can get a really good Chrysler store in a Detroit market, there’s some really good upside there,” he said.
