I happened to be across the street from my local Nissan dealer yesterday, when I noticed a banner hanging off the parking structure. That sign touted Alhambra Nissan as the #1 Nissan dealer (cue Jeremy Clarkson voice). . . in the world.
Now, I found this to be somewhat of a shock. I’ve seen the world’s largest Toyota dealer, hell I bought a car from them once. But that dealership – Longo Toyota in El Monte – is a massive city of a dealership, taking up acres and featuring a Starbucks, Subway Sandwich shop, and AAA office inside its confines. Alhambra Nissan takes up one unassuming block in a sleepy bedroom community 10 miles from downtown LA.

The tie-clad sales staff, milling around in the shade on this 90 degree+ day didn’t exactly reinforce their claim either. I drive by this dealership pretty frequently, and while  Longo is always abuzz, here it usually looks like a ghost town. Of course it is possible that Nissan sales are just so bad that this innocuous, low-traffic appearing dealer does sell the most. Somehow however that just doesn’t really add up.
That led me to do some investigative reporting Googling to see if they really were the #1 dealer in the world. What I found was that there are apparently dozens of #1 Nissan dealers out there, indicating that the term ‘#1’ must have some different meaning to which I am unaccustomed. Alhambra Nissan is not even in the top ten search results for top Nissan dealerships, however Universal City Nissan does show up as a claimed #1 dealer in the world, and Metro Nissan says they’re the“Largest Volume Dealers of New Nissans in the Inland Empire and the San Gabriel Valley.” Perhaps they haven’t heard the news (or seen the banner) as Alhambra is also in the San Gabriel Valley.
What does it all mean? Who knows, but it’s safe to say that you should take any statement that any car dealer makes with a grain of salt, hell, an ocean’s worth, just to be safe. Is Alhambra Nissan the world’s largest? Probably not. Does it matter? No, but I thought the sign was funny.