The group era's founding, at founding strength: one Buick store, 1977

1977 · FOUNDING ONLY — THE PRESENT BUSINESS IS NOT PROFILED HERE

This row is row 7's first paragraph, deliberately cut out and printed alone, because the baseline discipline for the group era is a discipline of separation: the founding is history and prints whole; the group's present business — its sales, its campaigns, its current fortunes beyond the dated course row 7 already carries — is not this section's to profile, and none is profiled here. The founding, at its strength: two men with one store between them. Mike Leep Sr., ten years from a salesman's desk at Highland Dodge (1967) and three years from his first store of his own (Highland Dodge, acquired 1974, the 1973 variant printing in row 7), joined with his former partner Van Gurley to acquire the Buick franchise in downtown South Bend in 1977. The name the group still trades under is the two surnames, in the order the partnership put them. The founding belief, in the company's own current summary of its beginnings, was to treat people the right way — printed here as the company's own account of itself, at that strength. Nothing else about 1977 survives in the open record reached at founding strength: no founding-day photograph, no first-month sales figure, and no partner agreement stands in the sources, and none is invented. The date the founding carries forward is the one the house itself keeps: October 7, 2027, fifty years on.

Sources:

1. The company record and the Tribune as cited in row 7's article — the founding facts are the same record, cut to founding size per this row's discipline.