companyThe Profit · Season 2, Episode 1 · Aired February 25, 2014
Athans Motors
Morton Grove, Illinois
Open. The rescue stuck and it continues to operate.
What happened after
Family-owned pre-owned luxury dealership; consistent current listings across Yellow Pages/Manta/SuperPages.
What happened on the show
Pete Athans had built a car dealership that sold almost no cars. It was millions in debt and hemorrhaging more than $150,000 a month, and when Marcus walked the lot he found only about 20 vehicles, all of them pricey luxury models the local market could not absorb, forcing general manager Tony to turn buyers away. Pete had also sunk a fortune into a customer lounge with movies and games instead of inventory. Having made his own money in the auto trade, Marcus offered $3.5 million for half the company. He liquidated the unsellable cars and the lounge extras to raise capital, doubled the inventory, and planned to remodel the floor to sell car products and reopen under a new name. Pete, inexperienced as he was, fought the changes at every turn. His micromanaging drove Tony to quit, and he tried to bolt from the deal once the lot was rebranded AutoMatch USA. Marcus talked him off the ledge and he recommitted. Heavy snow nearly buried the grand opening, but the two pulled it off to a busy crowd.
After the cameras left
The dealership survived and kept trading. It operates today as a family owned pre owned luxury dealer on Waukegan Road in Morton Grove, Illinois, with consistent current listings across the major business directories. In a later Season 3 aside, the AutoMatch brand Marcus created here even resurfaced when he used one of the stores as a test project for another company he was fixing. We did not turn up a dated recent review, so the evidence is directory based, which keeps this at medium confidence, but every signal points to an open, operating business.
Sources
Confidence: medium. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.