Jim Tipton didn’t expect to outgrow his Morrison Road Hyundai dealership in just eight years, but that’s exactly what happened.
On Friday morning in a former cornfield just north of the Texas Coastal Professional Building off I-69E in north Brownsville, Tipton, president and owner of Tipton Auto Group, presided over the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new Tipton Hyundai.
With earth-moving equipment and two new Hyundai vehicles serving as a backdrop, he introduced the assembled crowd to his family, dealership team members, local elected officials and a representative from Hyundai Motor America among others.
“We’re going to be moving from a 6,500-square-foot-facility into 25,000-square-foot facility,” Tipton said. “It’s going to be state of the art. It’ll be the newest, greatest dealership in the Rio Grande Valley. We’re just so happy and so enthusiastic about it.”
He said his existing dealership has more than 12,000 customers now and has run out of room “to accommodate everything and treat people the way we want to be treating them.”
Tipton said site preparation for the new location will start right away and that the contractor, Ziwa Construction, estimates an 11-month build time as long as they can avoid delays in getting construction materials, which isn’t guaranteed.
“Jorge De La Garza from Ziwa tells me we’ll probably do all the site work and build the foundation for the building and wait for the steel to come, because that’s probably going to be one of the more difficult commodities to get, is the steel and the glass,” he said. “So rather than having the building first and then the site, it’s probably going to be the site first and then the building.”
Tipton said he’ll likely convert the Morrison Road location into a stand-alone Bronco dealership, noting that “Bronco is emerging as almost a separate franchise from Ford Motor Company.”
He’s also planning a new Boggus Tipton Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram store in Brownsville as successor to the Central Boulevard dealership that Tipton and Bob Boggus, president and owner of Boggus Motors, acquired from Don Johnson Motors two years ago. Construction will begin immediately after the Hyundai facility is finished, Tipton said.
“We haven’t found a piece of ground yet,” he said. “As soon as we locate one and make the acquisition, then we’ll begin construction on that as well.”
Tipton said the new dealership will employ approximately 50 people and that most of the personnel are in place, though they will be hiring sales people and technicians and have teamed up with Texas Southmost College for technical training.
“We’ve entered into a memorandum of understanding with TSC and their automotive division,” he said. “We are taking currently eight students of theirs and using them in the shop, and we’re mentoring them. We’re going to continue that program into the future. It’s important that we grow our own technicians rather than trying to find them or steal them from somebody else.”
Tipton Auto Group, which includes Ford, is still struggling to keep enough new vehicles in stock, an issue affecting dealerships everywhere due to the ongoing shortage of silicon semiconductor chips used in all new vehicles. Automakers warn the issue will persist even into 2023, though as it happens Hyundai is one of the least affected by the shortage, which means it’s a fine time to build a bigger dealership, Tipton said.
“Hyundai managed better than most,” he said. “I believe they must have had a whole bunch of them in stock. Hyundai is one of two or three manufacturers that actually had an increase in share of sales this year. They were ahead of projections, actually. They try to sell a million new vehicles in the United States (each year) and they came real close.”
Tipton said of the new dealership: “My employees deserve it, our customers deserve it, and Hyundai deserves it.”
