Pep Boys

Pep Boys was founded by Emanuel (Manny) Rosenfeld, Maurice (Moe) Strauss, Moe Radavitz and W. Graham (Jack) Jackson, four Philadelphians who met and became friends while serving in the U.S. Navy during World War I. In 1921 each put up $200 to open an auto supplies store in their hometown. Strauss began as a silent partner because he was still employed at a competing store.⁠[1][1][1]

The store was so small that only a very short name would fit on its sign. According to company lore, “Pep” was taken from Pep Valve Grinding Compound, one of the shop’s first products, and the store was named Pep Auto Supply; another story holds that a local police officer, when writing equipment citations, would tell motorists to go to the “boys” at Pep for replacement parts.⁠[1][1][1]

After Moe Radavitz left in the early 1920s, the remaining three added their own names to the store’s name in 1923. The company then commissioned Harry Moskovitch to draw caricatures of the three founders: Manny, with a Charlie Chaplin mustache, on the left, Moe in the middle, and originally Jack on the right, later replaced by Moe’s brother Isaac (Izzy) Strauss, though the company name did not change. The figures later appeared on T-shirts, matchbooks and cement statues in front of stores, and came to life in Claymation in television ads of the late 1980s.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

The company was incorporated in 1925 as Pep Auto Supply Co. In the late 1920s Manny Rosenfeld brought his brother Murray into the business, while Izzy Strauss left to start his own automotive chain. By 1928 Pep Boys had about a dozen stores in the Philadelphia area; the Strauss and Rosenfeld families together still controlled about one-fifth of the company’s stock into the early 1990s.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 1932 Moe Strauss sent Murray Rosenfeld to the West Coast to launch the business commonly known as Pep Boys West, and the first two California stores opened in Los Angeles in 1933, when the chain had 40 stores in Philadelphia. Because of the distance between them, the two halves came to manage merchandising separately: western stores grew larger with wider selections, while eastern stores focused more on service. During World War II, when automobile production was curtailed, the western stores stocked non-automotive goods such as work clothes, bicycles and lawn and garden equipment.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

The company went public in 1946, with Manny Rosenfeld as president and Moe Strauss as chairman of the board. For roughly the next three decades it expanded cautiously, insisting on owning rather than leasing its stores and avoiding debt.⁠[1][1]

After Manny Rosenfeld died in 1960, Moe Strauss also became president; under his direction the chain added only two stores net in the twenty years from 1964 to 1984. In 1973 he passed the presidency to his son Benjamin Strauss while remaining chairman until 1977, and he was still a director when he died in 1982. Benjamin Strauss became chairman and chief executive officer in 1982 and from 1984 held all three posts.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 1986 Benjamin Strauss named Mitchell Leibovitz president, the first president from outside the founding families. Leibovitz had joined in 1978 as controller and became chief financial officer within a year; while running eastern operations from 1979 to 1984 he closed 32 old stores, opened 60 new ones over two years, and financed the eastern expansion with a $50 million offering of convertible debentures. By 1986 Pep Boys was the second-largest chain in the automotive aftermarket, after Western Auto Supply.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

From February 1986 to February 1991 the company invested $477 million in the five-year plan, almost as much as its 1986 sales of $486 million. Over that period the store count doubled to 337 and product offerings grew from 9,000 items to 24,000; stores were converted into “superstores” averaging about 23,000 square feet, with more service bays and an “everyday low price” strategy. The company was added to the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in 1990; in 1991, its 70th anniversary year, annual sales topped $1 billion for the first time and employment rose from 5,500 to 14,000.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

In 1993 Leibovitz put all technicians and mechanics on commission. Three months later, consumer fraud inspectors in California, Florida and New Jersey charged Sears’ auto service division with systematically overcharging customers for unnecessary repairs, pointing to its commission system; Leibovitz kept the arrangement, backed by an ethics policy under which mechanics who made unnecessary repairs would be fired and commissions would be docked for work that had to be redone. Service then accounted for 13% of the company’s total revenue.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In 1995 the company launched PartsUSA, a parts-only store format without service bays or tires, aimed at the “buy-for-resale” market of professional mechanics and garages as well as do-it-yourself customers; by 1997 there were 109 such stores, renamed Pep Boys Express that year, when company revenues reached $2 billion. In 1998 the company sold 100 of the Express stores to AutoZone and closed nine more. By the company’s count, its store total peaked at 711 in 1997.⁠[1][1][1][1]

The company lost more than $50 million in 2000 and responded by closing 38 stores and two distribution centers, eliminating 1,300 jobs, cutting store hours and paying down debt; only two new stores were planned for 2002. During Leibovitz’s tenure, service rose from 4% to 45% of the business, with 6,500 service bays bringing in about half of revenue; service sales grew 25% from 1998 to 2001, reaching $418 million.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

After comparable-store sales declined in 2002, Leibovitz retired, and Lawrence Stevenson, former head of the Canadian book retailer Chapters, became chief executive in 2003. He overhauled merchandising and marketing, closed underperforming stores and cut staff, planning to close 33 stores, mainly in California, bringing the count down to 596. In 2004 the company introduced a new store format and logo, began operating as Pep Boys Auto and planned to remodel every store by 2008; it returned to profitability that year after losing more than $30 million in 2003, but posted losses again in 2005.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

Around February 2006 the board asked its long-time financial adviser Goldman Sachs to explore strategic and financial alternatives; Stevenson remained chief executive while director William Leonard became chairman. James Mitarotonda, chairman of major shareholder Barington Capital Group, blamed Stevenson for the setbacks and predicted a sale or another restructuring.⁠[1][1][1]

On January 29, 2012, Pep Boys signed a merger agreement with Auto Acquisition Company, formed by funds affiliated with the Los Angeles private equity firm The Gores Group, under which shareholders would receive $15 per share in cash; the board approved it unanimously.⁠[2][2][2]

On May 29, 2012, Pep Boys and the Gores parties signed a settlement agreement terminating the merger agreement and its financing commitments; Gores agreed to pay Pep Boys a $50 million fee and reimburse certain merger-related expenses, with mutual releases. The special shareholders’ meeting scheduled for May 30 was canceled.⁠[3][3][3][3]

As of January 31, 2015, Pep Boys had 806 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico, comprising 563 Supercenters, 237 Service & Tire Centers and six Pep Express stores, with a total of 7,524 service bays in 800 of them, and about 19,000 employees. Supercenters averaged about 20,000 square feet and combined do-it-for-me service and installation with do-it-yourself parts sales; Service & Tire Centers averaged about 6,000 square feet and offered do-it-for-me service only. The company was headquartered in Philadelphia, its shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PBY, and total revenues for fiscal 2014 were about $2.085 billion.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4][4][4]

On October 26, 2015, Pep Boys signed a merger agreement with Bridgestone Retail Operations, which launched a cash tender offer at $15 per share. On December 11 the offer was raised to $15.50 per share, and on December 24 to $17 per share, while the termination fee Pep Boys would owe in certain circumstances rose from $35 million to $39.5 million.⁠[5][5][5][6][6][7][7][7]

On December 30, 2015, Pep Boys signed a merger agreement with Icahn Enterprises Holdings, a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises, which launched a cash tender offer at $18.50 per share. Before signing, Pep Boys gave notice terminating its agreement with Bridgestone, and Icahn Enterprises paid the $39.5 million termination fee to Bridgestone on Pep Boys’ behalf.⁠[8][8][8][8]

Icahn Enterprises’ tender offer expired at midnight on February 2, 2016, with about 38,114,742 shares, or about 82% of shares outstanding, validly tendered; the buyer accepted all validly tendered shares on February 3 and completed the merger on February 4, making Pep Boys a wholly owned subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises. The company applied to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, and the members of its board resigned that day.⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9]

Icahn Enterprises said the main reasons for the acquisition were to add product lines to its automotive segment, create operating synergies, strengthen distribution channels and improve customer service; by its measure the total value of the acquisition was about $1.2 billion, including the fair value of the Pep Boys stake it held before gaining control. After the acquisition, Pep Boys and IEH Auto, a parts distributor acquired in 2015, were operated together under the subsidiary IEP Auto Holdings.⁠[10][10][10]

Icahn Enterprises’ automotive segment is run through its subsidiary Icahn Automotive Group, headquartered in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, and focuses on automotive repair and maintenance services. The segment exited the aftermarket parts and retail merchandise business in the first quarter of 2025, and in October and November 2025 transferred $465 million of owned real estate to Icahn Enterprises’ real estate segment, with the automotive segment leasing back, at fair market rents, the locations where it continued to operate.⁠[11][11][11][11]

At the end of 2025, Icahn Enterprises’ automotive segment had about 820 company-operated store locations (181 of whose properties were owned by the real estate segment), 727 franchise locations and 13 distribution centers.⁠[11]

On July 19, 2026, Icahn Enterprises and its subsidiary Icahn Automotive Group signed a stock purchase agreement with Mavis Tire Supply and others to sell all of the shares of The Pep Boys-Manny, Moe & Jack Holding Corp. to the Mavis side for a base price of $700 million in cash, subject to customary post-closing adjustments; Icahn Enterprises guaranteed Icahn Automotive’s obligations. On July 21, Mavis Tire Express Services and Icahn Enterprises jointly announced the deal.⁠[12][12][12][12][12][13]

Under the transaction, some Pep Boys entities and businesses were excluded: Icahn Enterprises retained the owned real estate previously transferred to it from Pep Boys, as well as the AAMCO Transmissions and Precision Tune Auto Care businesses. Pep Boys then had nearly 800 locations nationwide offering tires, repairs, oil changes and maintenance, with a significant presence in the western United States; after the deal Mavis’s network would exceed 4,400 service centers in the United States and Canada.⁠[12][13][13][13]

David Sorbaro, co-chief executive of Mavis, called Pep Boys one of the most well-respected names in the automotive aftermarket and said its distribution network would strengthen Mavis’s supply chain nationwide; Pep Boys chief executive Joe Auriemma said that as part of Mavis, Pep Boys would gain scale, footprint and operational and technological strength. Icahn Enterprises chairman Carl IcahnCarl IcahnCarl Icahn is an American investor known for activist investing and hostile takeovers; in the 1980s his battles for control of companies such as TWA earned him a reputation as a “corporate raider.” He controls the diversified holding company Icahn Enterprises, his main investment vehicle, and has led shareholder campaigns at public companies including Apple, Herbalife, Xerox and Illumina.Open the full entry welcomed the acquisition, saying the combined businesses would benefit from economies of scale; Icahn Enterprises chief executive Ted Papapostolou said the company had worked with the Pep Boys team over the past decade to grow the business and strengthen its competitive position.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13][13][13][13][13]

Covington & Burling and Bullard Law Group served as legal counsel and Jefferies as exclusive financial adviser to Mavis; Brown Rudnick served as legal counsel to Icahn Enterprises.⁠[13][13]

On August 20, 2026, Mavis and Icahn Enterprises announced the completion of the transaction: a Mavis subsidiary acquired Pep Boys from Icahn Automotive Group for about $700 million in cash, subject to customary purchase price adjustments, while Icahn Enterprises retained the owned real estate and the AAMCO and Precision Tune businesses. Pep Boys kept its brand identity as one of the Mavis family of brands; with nearly 800 Pep Boys locations added, Mavis’s network exceeded 4,400 service centers in the United States and Canada. Stephen SorbaroStephen SorbaroStephen Sorbaro is co-chief executive officer of the U.S. tire and automotive repair and maintenance provider Mavis Tire Express Services, which he leads together with his brother David Sorbaro; the company was founded by the Sorbaro family, and the two hold shares in it through West First Management, a holding company they control. Since 2018, under their leadership, Mavis has merged with Express Oil Change & Tire Engineers and acquired chains including NTB, Tire Kingdom and Pep Boys.Open the full entry, co-chief executive of Mavis, said the focus was now on bringing the organizations together and supporting technicians and store teams.⁠[14][14][14][14][14][14][14]

At the completion of the deal, Pep Boys had nearly 800 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico, with many ASE-certified technicians serving customers ranging from everyday drivers to commercial fleets.⁠[14]

Pep Boys: Official website: https://www.pepboys.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]

Icahn Enterprises: Official website: https://www.ielp.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

Mavis Tire Express Services: Official website: https://www.mavis.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]