Thirdcoast Motors
Part 2: From inventory access to in-house advantage
After gaining control of inventory, Thirdcoast Motors focused on increasing margins. See how a $600K financing solution helped build an in-house service center, reduce reconditioning costs, and capture more value from every vehicle sold.
"Before, a good car would come up at auction and I'd have to wait to hear whether I could move on it. Now the decision sits with me. I see the car, I buy the car, and I already know it's mine." — Dom Russo, owner of Thirdcoast Motors
Dom Russo had built Thirdcoast Motors into a high-volume Chicago dealership by buying well at auction and moving inventory quickly. Demand was there. The constraint was structure. Under floorplan financing, the lender held title to every vehicle, limiting how fast Russo could act and how much control he could keep over inventory, timing, and margin.
The Situation
Floorplan financing is built for inventory, and for years it did its job, keeping cars on Thirdcoast’s lots across every location. The terms came with strings the dealership felt daily. The lender held the title, capped how much inventory Russo could carry at once, and weighed in on which vehicles qualified in the first place. A standout car outside those lines was a car he couldn’t chase, no matter how well he’d read it. Russo came to National for capital that put those decisions back in his hands.
The Challenge
The hardest moments came at auction, when the right car rolled across and Russo knew within seconds it was a winner. He had the eye, the demand waiting back on the lot, the buyer practically lined up. What he didn’t have was the freedom to act on that certainty, because moving on the car meant working through the floorplan structure first, and by the time the path cleared, the window had often closed. The business was profitable and growing, which made it sting all the more. Watching a vehicle he’d read correctly go to a slower buyer with deeper room to move was its own kind of frustration, the sharp kind that comes from knowing you were right and getting boxed out anyway. Russo knew exactly what he’d do with more room to operate, and he needed a partner ready to hand it to him.
National structured $500K in uncollateralized Cash Flow Financing, designed around the way the dealership actually operated.
Every vehicle Thirdcoast bought now landed in its own name at the moment of purchase, with no lender weighing in on individual units and no cap on which cars Russo could chase. Ownership of the title put margin, resale, and timing under his control, unit by unit. Cash Flow Financing carries a higher cost than the bank-rate floorplan line it replaced, and Russo understood the trade exactly. He was paying for control, and for a dealer whose edge lived in moving faster than the next buyer, that control was worth the premium. The whole design followed the rhythm the business had already proven, built for fast decisions, auction timing, and inventory the dealership owned outright.
Free to act on last-minute auction purchases, Thirdcoast widened its inventory and lifted gross revenue by 13% in the months after the first round. Russo leaned harder into what he did best, running his playbook faster and holding tighter control over every margin along the way.
The first round delivered proof on the ground, and everything that came next was built on it.
Why This Works
Capital structured around a business that already performs starts compounding immediately. The $500K went toward multiplying a playbook Russo had spent years sharpening, turning a proven instinct into more volume and firmer control. That move marked the shift from capital that supports day-to-day operations to capital built to expand what the business could do next. Round one is where Thirdcoast crossed it.
Six months later, Russo came back with a bigger question.
Part 1: When the model works, capital should move with it
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