When Hanania Automotive Group CEO Jack Hanania Sr. applied for a job selling cars in 1983, he had no idea it would lead to being Northeast Florida’s No. 1 volume automobile dealer 41 years later.
“I was surprised they hired me on the spot. The manager said go put on a shirt and tie and be here tomorrow morning.”
Hanania said his plan, at the time, was not to find a career. He was looking for a company car.
“The motivational factor for me was that my car broke down and I needed a car. I wanted to get in there and do what I had to do to get a demonstrator.”
Born and raised in Jacksonville, Hanania attended Samuel Wolfson High School and then Florida Junior College, now Florida State College at Jacksonville, where he studied accounting.
“I love numbers,” Hanania said.
After six months selling on the showroom floor, at age 22, Hanania was promoted to sales manager.
“They wanted me to invigorate people who had been there for 20 or 25 years. They had been in the business longer than I had been alive,” Hanania said.
Early in his career, Hanania, 64, said he began learning lessons that would help him grow his network of dealerships.
“When you get in a bind, you will create your own destiny,” and “Only in America, if you work hard and stick to the values of free business enterprise, you can do very well.”
Hanania Automotive Group comprises 16 dealership locations selling new and used inventory across brand franchises including Audi, Acura, Buick, Chevrolet, Genesis, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Subaru and Volkswagen, along with two collision repair centers.
In addition to 13 locations in Jacksonville, Orange Park and St. Augustine, Hanania has dealerships in Estero and Miami in Florida; and a dealership in Pittsburgh.
The transition from salesman to owner
After taking over the sales manager role and then setting sales records, Hanania started on the path to building his own business when a competing car dealer reached out with a proposal.
“Luther Coggin called me. His company was growing and the company where I was was not growing. I met him and he gave me an opportunity. Luther saw something in me,” Hanania said.
The new job meant getting off the sales floor and into the administrative offices.
“I was running his finance department. One day Luther called me into his office and told me he wanted me to run his Acura dealership. It was having a tough time getting brand awareness. I took over as general manager and got it on its feet,” Hanania said.
That success led to another opportunity.
“Luther wanted to keep me, so he offered to sell me 20% of the business. He gave me a price and we shook hands on the deal.”
Two years later, the dealership exceeded all forecasts and recorded a record year in sales. Hanania wanted to buy another 20% share and Coggin agreed.
“Our deal was for me to buy it out over a period of time,” Hanania said.
Coggin eventually began considering cashing out and selling his network of dealerships to a company in South Florida that owned AutoNation.
“That deal blew up, so I went back and offered to buy another 10% with first right of refusal for the rest,” Hanania said.
In 1998, Coggin found a buyer for all of his dealerships and Hanania made a proposal to buy the remaining interest in the Acura dealership.
“He gave me a big number, so I asked him to finance it for me. He did and it worked out for both parties. Fifteen years after I got in the business, I became a dealer on Aug. 15, 1998,” Hanania said.
He then began expanding, buying dealerships and real estate to build on as Hanania Automotive Group steadily grew.
Property along Blanding Boulevard in West Jacksonville would become home to Hanania Acura, Volkswagen, Hyundai and Audi.
Hanania said over the years, the business weathered the ups and downs of the national economy as he grew it by paying for expansion with revenue instead of credit.
Hanania broke ground on a new dealership in July 2008 and two months later, “I woke up with a bad feeling about the economy. I was paying as I went along, but I felt like I needed to go out and borrow some money. I called my banker and gave him a number and he gave it to me. Three weeks later, the Great Recession began.”
The dealership opened in November 2009 in the midst of the downturn.
“Then the economy started improving. It got better in 2010 and by 2011, it was awesome,” Hanania said.
That experience reinforced his business philosophy to “Keep the faith, keep the focus. Stay the course and never second-guess yourself. Keep moving,” Hanania said.
Since then the company has grown and expanded outside Northeast Florida to include dealerships in South and Southwest Florida and Pittsburgh in the Northeast.
Hanania and his wife, Debbie, have two sons who are in the family business. Jack Hanania Jr. is vice president of the company and Mark Hanania is general manager of Infiniti of Orange Park.
Hanania said the next generation is continuing the family business with the philosophies and strategies that have succeeded since his first day selling cars.
“We want to build recurring business when our customers’ kids will buy cars from us. Some of our team members, their kids are working for us. That’s growth. We want to build on taking care of our customers,” Hanania said.
Commitment to the community
Hanania and his company support many organizations. He is a past board member of the YMCA and supports local and national charities including Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Wolfson Children’s Hospital, American Cancer Society, Dreams Come True, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, United Service Organization, Catholic Charities, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Nemours Children’s Health and River Garden Senior Services, among others.
In 2013, Hanania presented a $37,884 donation to K9s for Warriors at a Jacksonville Jaguars game.
“The donation from the Jack Hanania Automotive Group permitted us to save multiple lives of warriors suffering from the invisible wounds of war. Additionally, these donations allowed us to rescue multiple dogs we subsequently trained to become service dogs. We are grateful to our donors and sponsors like the Jack Hanania Automotive Group who help us work toward achieving our mission of ending veteran suicide,” K9s for Warriors CEO Daniel Bean said.
In December 2024, Hanania was inducted into the Florida Council on Economic Education’s First Coast Business Hall of Fame.
Each year, inductees are recognized for their servant leadership and inspiring others to make a positive difference in the community.
“Jack Hanania is a hometown hero and embodiment of the American dream. As a Jacksonville native, he built a thriving business, fostering employment and private capital investment, significantly enhancing the local tax base through his tireless work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit. Jack’s accomplishments and contributions to our community are second to no one,” said Jeanne Augspurger, 2024 event and selection committee chair.
Investing in Downtown
In addition to expanding the company’s real estate holdings for car dealerships, Hanania and a partner are invested in Downtown Jacksonville.
Their first acquisition was the six-story historic Dyal-Upchurch Building at 6 E. Bay St., purchased in 2017. In 2020, they bought the three-story Title & Trust Company of Florida Building at 200 E. Forsyth St.
The largest purchase Downtown Hanania did without a partner. That acquisition is the automotive group’s headquarters building at 1200 Riverplace Blvd., the former Stein Mart Building on the Southbank that bears Hanania’s name.
The company’s corporate offices occupy the seventh floor of the 10-story Class A building that has more than 200,000 rentable square feet and an adjacent six-level parking garage.
“People ask me why I buy buildings Downtown. Well, why not? They say Downtown won’t succeed. With that attitude, it won’t,” Hanania said.
Looking to the future, Hanania will continue to build the hometown family business with his sons and the company’s 1,000 team members.
“There is a lot of consolidation in the automotive business. I have had a lot of people knock on my door who would like to buy us, but we are not for sale. I love what we do and I have an exit strategy with my sons. When you sell a business, it’s not the brick-and-mortar, it’s the talent. That’s our future. Our people aren’t up for adoption.”
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