NY’s largest automotive group bets on Micron impact and buys Clay car dealership

Clay, N.Y. – New York’s largest automotive group has acquired Sharon Chevrolet in Clay, continuing the Buffalo-based group’s expansion into the Syracuse area.

The West Herr Automotive Group bought the Chevy dealership from Mike Carrow. Terms of the purchase were not released.

The dealership will reopen this Friday, Feb. 13 as West Herr Chevrolet of Clay. Sharon Chevrolet’s 55 employees will remain with the dealership.

The acquisition is West Herr’s second in the Syracuse area and adds to its inventory of more than 40 dealerships in the state. It bought East Syracuse Chevrolet in 2021. That dealership is now named West Herr Chevrolet of East Syracuse.

Scott Bieler, president and CEO of the auto group, said the acquisition gives the company the opportunity to grow both the West Herr and Chevrolet brands in the Syracuse market.

He said the purchase also gives the group the chance to serve what is expected to be a growing population in Syracuse’s northern suburbs.

Micron Technology broke ground in January on a massive semiconductor manufacturing plant on the same road, Route 31, five miles east.

Micron says the plant will create up to 9,000 direct jobs and more than 40,000 indirect jobs over the next 20 years. The project is expected to boost the population of Onondaga County, especially Clay, which is already the county’s most populous town.

“We see it as a growth opportunity,” said Mary Wright, marketing director for West Herr Automotive Group. “People are going to need automobiles.”

West Herr was founded in 1950 when Harold West and Joseph Herr Jr. set up shop selling Fords under a tent in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg.

The company has come a long way since then. Today, it has 41 dealerships in Erie, Niagara, Monroe, Ontario and Onondaga counties, representing 27 franchises and employing more than 3,100 people.

Sharon Fox opened Sharon Chevrolet in Phoenix in 1981. The dealership moved to a new and much larger building at 3687 Route 31 in Clay in 2018.

Carrow, a longtime member of the Fox Dealership Group, bought the dealership from the Fox family in 2021.

“I am proud and very grateful to have been a part of the Fox Dealership family and Sharon Chevrolet for 42 years,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “The decision to sell was not taken lightly, but I am certain that the West Herr Auto Group is uniquely the right group to take us into the future.”