Dealership and Franchise Counts

Many if not most OEM service parts systems used in the U.S. are priced (at least partially) per franchise basis (see the section after the chart for more detail.  There for the appropriate dealer counts are an important factor to the industry.

Automotive Dealership Counts - U.S.
Automaker / Franchise Count Categories /
Sementation		 Comments
Acura 270
Audi 273
BMW 338   Includes 100 Mini franchises (assumes all are co-located with BMW)
Chrysler/Fiat 2,317   Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Fiat
Ford 3,456 MRD 3,202 Ford and 254 Lincoln (assumes non are co-located)
General Motors 4,250   Chevy = 3091; Buick = 2124; GMC = 1,770; Cadillac = 950 (7,939 total)
Honda 1,034    
Hyundai 803   [A]
Infiniti 159    
Jaguar 166    
Land Rover 720    
Kia 169   [A]
Lexus 229    
Mazda 638    
Mercedes-Benz 353    
Mitsubishi 400    
Nissan 1,057    
Porsche 196    
Saab 204    
Subaru 618   [B] Aggregate dealership count of SOA + SNY + SNE + Servco
Suzuki 421   [C]
Toyota 1,233 Star Elite [D] Aggregate dlr count of TMS + GST + SET + Servco; includes Scion
Volvo 582    
VW 315   Excluding Audi
Total 19,947    

      Notes:

 

Rooftop, Franchise and Dealership Counts

According to a combination of 2011 Urban Sciences press releases and Automotive News articles, the total number of new-vehicle automotive franchises in the U.S. is nearly 30,000.  Eliminating franchises of a single automaker at a single rooftop (a single retail facility) - brings the modified franchise count in the U.S. to nearly 20,000 excluding exotics (and just over 20,000 including exotics - that is, brands with less than 100 U.S. retail outlets).  The vast majority of the same-automaker adjustment to franchise counts ties to the Big-Three domestic automotive manufacturers accounting for 18,744 franchises by only 10,000 once the same automaker duplicates are removed.

Many use term "dealership" to mean "rooftop" - according to  NADA, the number of new car dealerships is now 17,725.  A Ford-Mazda store would be counted as one dealership. 

Finally, for Service Parts, a small percentage of dealerships have a secondary location - for example a wholesale parts operation and warehouse in a different location or separate building.