Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I did a closing recently for American Car Center, and it seems that another subprime used car dealer down the street closed not too long after they did. WLTX has the story about the Columbia location closing here, and about the chain as a whole here.

The closing was supposed to be temporary, but we are closing in on a month of downtime now when what was promised was two days, so who knows the current state of things? There billboard, which is still active, certainly puts on a show of normal activity, but their website https://www.usautosales.info/about-us now redirects to a site which is strictly about loan payments.

I'm trying to bring to mind what this building was before. It looks like it has always been a dealership, but I'm drawing a blank on the history. Nice color scheme though.

I drove right by this place the other day when I was looking for it, because I forgot to write down the address, and I thought a vacant used car lot would be pretty easy to find. In fact I must have driven by hundreds of times while it was in business, and never noticed it. I can't find a standard review site but reviews on some of the smaller sites lead me to believe they were in business at least until fall of 2022.

At any rate it is good to see that the building is still being watched over.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

I last wrote about this spot when it was (no longer) Premier Plus Motors.

Since that time, a Hertz rental resale lot set up operation there, and that may or may not be permanently closed now. All this is part of Chapter 11 for the company, something I had not heard about:

Hertz announced plans to temporarily close all 87 car sales locations in the U.S. on Wednesday.

Several individuals involved with the car rental giant said the company told employees of the news via a conference call on Tuesday. Representatives on the call detailed plans to cease operations at the locations on Thursday, Oct. 22.

Hertz said in a statement, "As part of our Chapter 11 process, Hertz has been working to right-size our fleet to align with current demand and meet the requirements of our lenders."

"Hertz has recently met its target to sell approximately 180,000 vehicles, and as a result is pausing the car sales program including temporarily closing corporate retail locations. Hertz has maintained the licenses for these locations and will evaluate its car sales program as it replenishes its fleet with new vehicles in 2021," the statement continued.

The report does not mention COVID-19, but that has to have been awful for car rentals.

(Hat tip to commenter ARTHUR P)

It looks like this old gas station at the corner of Two Notch and Germany Street is vacant again.
T T & B was the follow-on operation to Auto Selection, which was the follow-on to K & C Radiator Center, so the car theme has been pretty consistent.