Earl Hesterberg Quotations

We are extremely pleased with our first-quarter results. Our consolidation and expense reduction initiatives, as well as our focus on the used vehicle business, are beginning to deliver the significant improvements that we anticipated when we implemented our strategic initiatives late last year. I am very pleased with the speed at which we are moving and believe it is a direct reflection of the strength of the operating team we have in place.

The appointment of regional CFOs is a natural step in the regionalization process we announced last November. Under John's leadership, this will create a very strong finance team that will improve our finance systems and analytical capabilities. Additionally, each of these regional CFOs possesses significant automotive retail experience and will be located with our regional vice presidents. This will enable them to support our regional vice presidents in standardizing and unifying our key operating processes, improving our cost structure and our overall efficiency levels.

We have Chevy stores in Texas, Oklahoma and Albuquerque and Denver, and our people are very excited.

We could not be more pleased with our investments in the Lexus and Toyota franchises in Manchester and Houston. These franchise and facility actions will support additional revenue and profit growth while leveraging our operational scale. The stock repurchase and franchise dispositions demonstrate our commitment to improve stockholder value and are consistent with our previously announced strategy.

We are very pleased to have experienced automotive people like Steve join our team. We need this type of leader to help us improve our overall operating efficiency while simultaneously growing our company.

Despite lower domestic-brand new vehicle sales during the fourth quarter, our company was able to realize meaningful improvements in our overall profit performance. This improvement was made possible by strong performances in our used vehicle and parts and service businesses, two key areas of strategic focus. We were able to increase revenues in both areas, and I was particularly pleased with our dramatic improvement in managing our used vehicle inventory.

Cliff has been an integral part of the management team at Group 1 since 1998. I would like to thank Cliff for his contributions and wish him well in his new endeavors.