February 13, 2017

Urban Science released statistics and insights today from its 2016 year-end Automotive Franchise Activity Report (FAR) that indicates continued stability in the number of automotive dealerships in the U.S. since the end of 2015.

As of January 1, 2017, there were 18,170 dealerships (rooftops), a 0.5 percent increase from January 1, 2015’s total of 18,087. The number of franchises, or brands a dealership sells, also experienced a period of stability, slightly increasing from 31,776 on January 1, 2016, to 32,011 as of January 1, 2017.

“The sales throughput for 2016 was 965 per dealership. This throughput narrowly missed setting another record level by one unit. This was due to the stable but increasing count of dealerships in 2016,” said Mitchell Phillips, Urban Science’s Global Director of Data. “With the current dealership count trend as we have seen for the past several years and a stable current industry forecast, exceeding the 2016 level is questionable.”