Don Ayres Honda: a Honda store from Honda's first American year

1970 — present

The founding: Don Ayres founded his Honda store in Fort Wayne in 1970 — the date the house gives for itself, and a date with a significance beyond the family. Honda had sold its first cars in America only the year before, a handful of the tiny N600 sedan in Hawaii in 1969, with sales in the continental United States beginning in 1970 through a first network of dealers. A Fort Wayne man opening a Honda store in 1970 was therefore buying into the marque at the first moment it could be bought into: the N600's America was forty-miles-per-gallon economy at a $1,275 sticker price, the opposite of everything Detroit was selling at the peak of the muscle-car market, and the Civic that followed in 1973 made the bet look wise.

The course: The house grew with the marque. Family-owned and operated from the founding, it came to stand on an eighteen-acre campus at 4740 Lima Road, on the city's north-side auto row. The second generation extended it: in 2019 Sara Ayres acquired the Acura store in southwest Fort Wayne, trading as Don Ayres Acura, and in November 2024 the house opened a new Honda facility on the Lima Road campus, cutting the ribbon on 14 November 2024 with the founder's name over the door. The closing line: founded 1970 by Don Ayres, family-owned for over fifty years, operated today by Sara Ayres — the city's oldest import house, and the only Fort Wayne store in this section that has sold one marque, under one family, from that marque's first American year to now.

Sources:

1. The house's own published story (the 1970 founding; the Lima Road campus; Sara Ayres's operation; the 2019 Acura acquisition), carried identically by Datanyze and DealerRater profiles.
2. Honda's fiftieth-anniversary-in-America release (the N600 in Hawaii 1969, continental sales from 1970, the first dealer network).
3. The house's record of the 4740 Lima Road grand opening, 14 November 2024.