Murray Chevrolet focused on Brandon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2011 (5496 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THERE are big changes coming up at Murray Chevrolet in Brandon.

This weekend, the Murray Auto Group’s flagship store in Brandon is moving into its new facility, which will be one of the largest auto stores in Manitoba.

And on April 1, the Murray Group officially takes over Radics Chrysler, one of Brandon’s two Chrysler stores. The renamed Murray Chrysler will be the 22rd store under the Murray Group umbrella and the first Chrysler dealership. (All the other Murray stores across Canada are GM dealerships except for Murray Hyundai.)

The Murray family has been involved in auto sales for 85 years and has been GM dealers since 1934. The family started in Souris, expanding to Brandon in 1960. Murray Chev in Brandon has been operating out of its current location at the south end of 18th Street since 1975.

“Our new-vehicle sales were up by 35 per cent, thanks in part to acquiring the Buick and GMC lines in late 2009,” said Doug Murray, Murray Chev’s general manager. “We really needed more space.”

Work began last May 1 on a 55,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the existing store. “Our new building is twice the size of our old store,” Murray said.

The new building has an 11-vehicle showroom with a specific display area for Cadillacs. There’s a large semi-enclosed customer lounge and children’s play area, both lacking in the older building. The customer lounge is connected to a 60-seat lunch and meeting room upstairs. Also upstairs are the dealership’s boardroom, phone centre, training room and computer room.

Behind the showroom is a three-lane drive-through separating the sales area and service department. The drive-through has a dual vehicle pit so that two vehicles can be worked on at the same time. “Our goal is to get oil changes done for customers in a timely fashion,” Murray said.

The service department has 18 work stations while the body shop can accommodate 18 vehicles. The body shop also has two state-of-the-art paint booths equipped with the latest drying technology for water-based paints. There’s also a four-bay reconditioning centre, two of which are for washing service-customer vehicles.

One other feature of the new building is the dealership’s two new tire carousels. The carousels were designed by Vidir Machine Shop, a Manitoba manufacture based in Arborg, and each holds 174 tires.

The dealership currently has about 100 staff, a figure that Murray expects to increase as sales continue to grow. Rather than holding one grand opening for the new building, Murray Chev will have a series of open houses in April to introduce the new facility to the people of Brandon.

Murray’s decision to purchase Radics Chrysler is one of the results of having the new building available. “My dad (86-year-old Clair Murray, who still comes to the office most days) and I were reluctant to tear down our old building considering how long we had been in there,” Murray said. “We decided to find something else to put in there.”

That would be Murray Chrysler. “We will need to freshen up the store first and put up new signage,” Murray says.

Radics Chrysler has been part of the Brandon business community since 1953, originally opening as Binkley Motors. Larry Radics bought the dealership in 1991.

“We expect to be carrying about 600 new and used vehicles between our two stores here,” Murray said. “We are also retaining all of Larry’s staff members.