Cyndie Mynatt buying
Cadillac, Chevy dealerships

Cyndie Mynatt, one of the most influential auto dealers in North Carolina, will purchase the Chevrolet and Cadillac stores in Concord owned by her brother Richard for an undisclosed amount.

Cyndie and Richard are the children of the late Ben Mynatt, founder of the Ben Mynatt dealerships located next to each other on a busy stretch of Highway 29 in Concord. The senior Mr. Mynatt passed way in 2001.

Cyndie Mynatt, a trustee of the North Carolina Auto Dealers Association, owns the Pontiac Buick franchise in Concord and the Nissan franchise in Salisbury, plus a used-car operation in Kannapolis.

With the acquisition of the Chevrolet store, she gets GM's No. 1-selling brand. With the acquisition of the Cadillac store, she gets a newly re-branded luxury marque that has an increasingly younger audience than it had back in the days of Eldorados and Sevilles.

"I'm pumped," Cyndie Mynatt, 52, says.

When the transaction is completed during the second quarter, she will also change the name of the dealerships to the Ben Mynatt Family of Dealerships. Now the group of franchises is marketed under the name Ben Mynatt Megastores.

With the acquisition, Cyndie Mynatt will control the GM nameplates in close-in Cabarrus County, one of the busiest auto market places in the state. Taken together, the Chevrolet-Cadillac and Pontiac-Buck dealerships are only about the 130th largest dealerships in the state.

But cross-town rivals like Toyota and Honda are the 10th and 13th largest dealerships in the state, indicating that the Mynatt operation has room to grow.

"You have to be smart about what you're competing against," Mynatt explains. "I can't design and manufacture the cars that we sell, that's up to Detroit, but we can equip our sales people with the knowledge to help customers understand the differences." Indeed, she has segments on selling autos on You Tube, the height of modern selling and networking. On You Tube, she discusses today's best auto salesperson, who may not have a background in selling.

In fact, she expects to achieve cost-savings around purchasing, human resrouces and services such as landscaping and advertising by having all the dealerships under one umbrella.

Since taking over the Pontiac-Buick franchise nearly 17 years ago, Mynatt has proven to be something of a dynamo. In addition to heading up the Cabarrus chamber, she has been the elected leader of the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association and a popular manager.

Her Nissan dealership has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any Nissan dealership in the mid-Atlantic region.

She has provided a week's vacation at a beach house to each of her roughly 80 employees, 40 in Concord and 40 in Salisbury.

With the acquisition of the Chevrolet-Cadillac franchises, her total number of employees will increase by 60.

Business in the past year has actually improved, thanks to new product-the Enclave cross-over vehicle--and new sales management, Cyndie Mynatt says. "It's been a long time since we've had a car that there's a waiting list for," she says, noting that Chevrolet will bring out a cross-over this fall. The CTS from Cadillac is also wait-listed, she adds.

Car sales at the Pontiac-Buick store are up about 27 percent during the first two months of this year vs. last year. The Nissan dealership is up 22 percent in the same time frame.

Meanwhile, she's excited about the re-branding effort under way at Pontiac, which is moving from nameplates like Bonneville, to more Euro sounding monikers such as the G8. A performance-luxury sedan, it will be priced in the low 30s.

She plans to expand the commercial truck operation in spite of similar operations in Charlotte and Mooresville. "You have to have the truck component to be a full service dealer," Mynatt says.

All told, Mynatt's current dealerships generate about $6 million to $7 million a month in sales.