TOP STORY OF THE DAY, brought to you free by WICU: York Automotive renovation now completed

York Automotive came into the Brazil market in 2005 from its original store in Greencastle, taking over buildings housing two existing car businesses on the north side of U.S. 40 just west of Brazil.

The organization has added several brands of automobiles over the years, and with its growth had outgrown its long-time home.

About a year ago, York Automotive undertook a huge expansion project — building a 29,000-square foot building across U.S. 40 from the current store to sell and service Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge and Ram products.

The building is now open to serve its clients already owning or wanting to purchase vehicles in those four brands, while the original store will continue to serve its Chevrolet and Buick customers.

Rob York, dealer principal of York Automotive, said the decision to move the Jeep line across the highway was an easy one.

“We did that because of all the new and exciting Jeep products that are coming out,” he said. “We just ran out of room in the other building.”

York is proud of the many amenities the new building offers, including 14 service bays (including hydraulic lifts that can raise schools buses, general manager Josh Keedy pointed out), an electronic alignment machine, a larger and improved parts department and two separate areas for car detailing. A car wash will be open by the end of the month, as well.

Hours are now available on Saturday from 8 to until 1 p.m. for service, with sales staff available until 3 p.m.

Keedy draws a lot of credit from York for conducting business from a portable trailer on the job site for the past 12 months.

Selling anything during a pandemic is difficult, York noted.

“It has had its different challenges,” he said. “We had a few people to miss work because of the pandemic, but overall were able to navigate through it. We really tried to make sure we were doing the right thing, that our customers and our employees stayed safe.”

York credits his team members for making the best of a difficult situation, and thinks the experience may have helped the business as a unit.

“The neat thing was that everyone stepped up and took time and invested in their work and efforts to make up when other people couldn’t be here,” he said. “I think it built our team and made us a little bit stronger for going through those challenges.

“All in all, I was proud of the year that we had considering all the challenges we faced.”

York noted that many people had to take on new roles to make things work.

“Some of us became teachers, others had to deal with the health department and people we are not used to dealing with,” he said. “It also shows a commitment to our community and our customers, and that’s what’s most important to us.”

Keedy agreed.

“One of the things that the past year has taught us at all of our locations is for employees to step up and make that extra step for customers,” he said. “When this first happened, we had a lot of people who didn’t want to come in and drive a car. In that case, we would take it to them.

“If they wanted to do their figures over the phone, we did that,” Keedy added. “Going the extra steps for our customers is what we were here to do. That’s the York way of doing business.”

The York brand expanded to Crawfordsville in 2000 before coming to Brazil five years later, and last year took over a Westgate dealership in Plainfield.

“That was kind of a leap of faith, because we did it during a pandemic,” York said. “We already had an agreement in place, and it’s worked out well.”

Vehicles at any of the four York stores are available to all customers, York said, and like all dealers with multiple stores the products are sometimes rotated between locations to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.

“Most of the time customers have built a relationship with their salesman, so having multiple sites can allow them to have access to many more products at our other stores.”

Selling multiple brands of vehicles offers more choice to customers, but it comes at a price.

The technicians are required to learn the operating system of each new one, down to every knob inside and out and important customer amenities like radio functions.

“It’s amazing how every time we get a new product that Josh and the team study and learn from a technician perspective every aspect of the technology in these vehicles, which is incredible,” he said. “It’s a testament to our people that they can learn all this information. We have been blessed to have the great talent we have.

“That’s the best thing about having an entirely new store — we have the best available technology here.””

So what’s the next step for the growing business?

York said the company is always on the lookout for good opportunities, but the first focus will be on improving the two older buildings currently in use.

“They had two buildings because there were rules at that time where you couldn’t have two different brands in the same building,” York pointed out. “We’ve tried to find a way to combine the two buildings and connect them, but it just isn’t going to work out. We’ll likely take the east showroom down and add on to the other building.

“I wanted to get the plans going in 2021, but that realistically won’t happen for another year or two.”

For now, York and his leadership team are focused on continuing improvement in what they currently do.

“We want our general managers to have continued growth and for us to keep meeting the needs of our customers,” he said.