Terry Taylor buys Toyota store from Prime

Terry Taylor, one of the country's largest owners of dealerships, has acquired another store — this time Prime Toyota - Boston in West Roxbury, Mass.

Prime Automotive Group sold the Toyota store to Taylor on Monday, Prime confirmed. It has been renamed Parkway Toyota of Boston.

Last week, Prime sold two other Toyota stores in Massachusetts to Group 1 Automotive Inc.

The Toyota sales are part of a process Prime began last summer to sell five dealerships, the company said in a statement last week. A Chevrolet store and a Subaru store also are slated to be sold.

"The sales are part of a larger Prime strategy to consolidate operations in the Northeast and are the culmination of agreements with manufacturers," the company said in the statement.

The sales also are separate from litigation and federal government action involving Prime's parent company, GPB Capital Holdings. In February, a federal New York judge ordered the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee GPB as part of a U.S. Securities Exchange Commission lawsuit alleging securities fraud.

The exact number of dealerships in Taylor's business empire isn't known. In March 2018, Automotive News estimated Taylor owned about 120 U.S. dealerships, with many holdings in the Southeast. In 2014, Automotive News reported Taylor had purchased three New York dealerships from Group 1.

A message was left Monday with Automotive Management Services Inc., Taylor's West Palm Beach, Fla., company.

Haig Partners, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., buy-sell firm, advised Prime in the sale of the Toyota store.

Prime, of Westwood, Mass., ranks No. 11 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., retailing 45,050 new vehicles in 2019.