The long-lived house at the doorstep: Gurley Leep, 1977 to the 2026 campus

1977 – 2027 · BOUNDARY-PLUS, AT THE CDP'S SOUTHERN EDGE

The house this row owns is not seated in Granger and never was — it is the long-lived house at Granger's doorstep, and the instruction for it is exact: its whole course at boundary-plus strength, printed here, with its home in the Mishawaka build's dealerships record, to which this article is the Granger pointer at full course size. The founding generation came out of another city's trade. Mike Leep Sr. started as a car salesman at Highland Dodge in 1967, rose through its ranks, and realized the dealer's ambition in 1974, acquiring Highland Dodge — the company's own history gives 1974; dealer-press and directory copies of the story also circulate with 1973 as the first-dealership year, and both print, unmerged. In 1977 Leep and his former partner Van Gurley expanded to South Bend, acquiring the Buick store downtown. That acquisition is the house's founding act: the Gurley Leep Automotive Family dates itself, in its own record and in the Tribune's anniversary arithmetic alike, to 1977, and its fiftieth anniversary falls on October 7, 2027.

The course from one downtown Buick store to a regional group runs, in the company's own telling, in three movements. First, the Michiana build-out: a partnership with the City of Mishawaka from 1984 to invest in the Grape Road corridor — Mayor Dave Wood's dating, in the Tribune's campus account — which moved the group's centre of gravity onto the corridor Granger's households actually shop, a few hundred yards south of the CDP line. The Grape Road addresses are the group's public face in the current record: the GM Giant at 215 W. Douglas Road and the stores along North Grape Road in Mishawaka. Second, the 1990s expansion the company's history page summarizes as new franchises and a strengthened northern-Indiana presence — Hyundai joined the family in 1999 and Subaru in 2003, on the stores' own records; Kia in 2000. Third, the multi-state era: expansion into Iowa with the Davenport auto-plaza acquisition (the Lujack's Northpark organization, in the dealer-press account of 2012), then Michigan, Illinois and Missouri, to twenty-one dealerships in five states in the 2021 giving report, twenty-two in the 2023 report, some 1,300 team members in the current company profile, and — in a 2012 e-commerce interview — thirty-five franchises at twenty-two stores, the two counts printing as their sources give them. The succession is familial and dated by office, not by obituary: Mike Leep Jr. and his cousin James Leep took over from Mike Leep Sr. and lead the family business in the current record.

The closing movement stands on Granger's own edge and is this build's to print whole. In April 2024 Mishawaka annexed and rezoned part of a seventy-acre ground at the northwest corner of Capital Avenue and Cleveland Road, at the company's request — ground at the CDP's southern edge, in Mishawaka by that annexation. On April 27, 2026 (the TribuneThe BMV leg of this build carries the campus's planned satellite license branch. The campus is aimed at completion around the fiftieth anniversary, October 7, 2027. One closing line, as the row requires: founded as a single downtown South Bend Buick store in 1977, the house stands in November 2026 as a five-state, twenty-two-dealership family group building the largest auto campus in its history on Mishawaka-annexed ground at Granger's southern line — closer to this ground than any dealer row has ever come, and, by the line, still not on it.

Sources:

1. Gurley Leep Automotive Family, the company's own history page (gurleyleepautofamily.com), read November 2026 — 1967 Highland Dodge start; 1974 acquisition; 1977 South Bend Buick; the 1990s and multi-state movements.
2. Leep Family Annual Giving Reports, 2021 and 2023 (company publications) — "Founded in 1977 with one car dealership in South Bend, Indiana"; 21 dealerships (2021), 22 dealerships in five states (2023); the Grape Road and Douglas Road addresses.
3. South Bend Tribune
4. Digital Dealer, 2012 (Steve Williams interview) — 35 franchises / 22 stores; the Davenport acquisition; Mike Leep Jr. and James Leep as vice-presidents. Store records for Hyundai (1999), Subaru (2003) and Kia (2000) joining the family.
5. License Branch — the campus's planned satellite BMV location and the annexation, cross-referenced.