The Steve Marshall Group has announced its purchase of two well-established dealerships to its growing family: Bill Howich Chrysler and Campbell River Honda.
With these acquisitions, the Steve Marshall Group reached a milestone of 14 dealerships across 15 locations across British Columbia and Hawaii.
“I want to sincerely thank Bill Howich for his trust in us to carry the torch,” said Steve Marshall, president of the Steve Marshall Group, in a press release. “His leadership, commitment to community and legacy of success have shaped automotive retail in Campbell River for decades. We are committed to building on that foundation with care, integrity, and continued dedication to the people of this community.”
Steve Davidson, the group's CEO, said Bill Howich reached out to the group to have a conversation about selling the two properties because he had previously been partners with Marshall at Campbell River Honda a while back before Howich took full ownership.
"Like he said yesterday (June 2) in his farewell speech to his staff, he felt pretty comfortable in having the group and a team already embedded in the community. He felt pretty good about leaving his staff and his company in the group's hands," said Davidson.
The Bill Howich Chrysler has been rebranded as River City RAM.
“We are excited to welcome both of these incredible teams into our Group,” said Karl Ebdrup, CEO of the Steve Marshall Group. “Reacquiring Campbell River Honda feels like a homecoming, and taking over the Bill Howich Chrysler location is a true honour—both professionally and personally. These milestones reflect not only our strategic growth but also our commitment to people-first leadership and deep community roots.”
These two additions mark the group's sixth and seventh acquisitions in 36 months, with the Steve Marshall Group adding stores in British Columbia and Hawaii. The company has a total of 14 stores, with seven located in the community.
Despite the threats of looming tariffs, Davidson said that the company would never buy if they based their business on watching the news.
"We've had to deal with intricacies in the car business for years, from the financial collapse in the late 2000s to COVID from 2020 to basically 2022, and then we had chip shortages coming out of COVID," he said. "Now we are entering tariffs, and we're not completely sure how those look. They change from day to day. We get updates from the manufacturers."
He also said the company has yet to see any impact from the tariffs, as far as pricing goes. He knows the manufacturers are still working out where they are going to build vehicles and are still working out a deal with Trump's US administration on what is going to be tariffed. And with so many parts moving back and forth between Canada, the United States and Mexico, Davidson says he can't tell anyone how the tariffs will impact the company's business.
Davidson also spoke about how the Steve Marshall Group has been able to expand so fast in the last 36 months.
"I think that we are in the space of the automotive industry where a lot of single-point stores don't have contingency plans or families to turn the store over to, so there's a lot of groups out acquiring single-point stores. It's becoming more difficult for single-point operators because groups have lots of resources they bring. They bring IT departments, HR departments, and marketing departments that you can spread among 14 stores, where it's hard for a single-point store to have all of those people in place," he said.
