By Amy Antenora
The Week in Review offers a snapshot of the most highly read stories of the week as seen on aftermarketNews. To access the complete stories, simply click on the highlighted links. If you missed reading one of our daily news emails, click on any of the dates listed at the bottom of the page to begin catching up on the latest industry news.
This week the industry was shocked and saddened by the news that Boyd Coddington, SEMA Hall of Famer and hot-rod industry icon, died at the age of 63 on Wednesday. Coddington was recognized world-wide for designing and building innovative hot rods. In addition, Coddington is credited with being the winningest custom-car builder of all time. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends. He will be greatly missed.
In other news, Counterman’s Top 20 Super Stores of 2007 was among the most read of this week’s features. This list reflects the most notable changes or acquisitions among store groups within the past 12 months. One of the most significant changes on this year’s list included the acquisition of Strauss Discount by Japanese retailer Autobacs. Within its findings, Counterman’s Super Stores List estimates that with an average store-count growth of 4.7 percent, the top 20 store chains will own half of all the stores in the market by 2011.
Number three on this year’s Super Stores list, O’Reilly Automotive made the news this week with the announcement of a new East Coast distribution center in Greensboro, NC. This continues the growth track O’Reilly has been on, as noted in the Super Stores List. The company plans to invest $41.7 million into the center over the next three years, creating 360 jobs.
Another one of our top-read stories this week was the Publisher’s Perspective column from Jon Owens, which takes a closer look at the Super Stores list. In it, he comments that “while on the surface it may appear that not much has changed among these powerful store groups over the past year, a peek behind the curtain reveals that much maneuvering and positioning has gone on and will continue to take place throughout 2008.”
Rounding out our list for this week’s most-read news stories is the announcement that billionaire investor Carl Icahn, Federal-Mogul’s Non-Executive chairman, is offering to sell a portion of his shares in the company. Thornwood Associates, Ichan’s firm, offered to sell some of its shares to the investment firm Nineteen Eighty-Nine, for the original purchase price of $900 million.
*Nicholas DiSabatino, AMN Editorial Intern, contributed to this report.
To view all of the news from the past week, simply click on the link for each corresponding day:
