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Joe Agresti was on a conference call in his Baton Rouge office when an unknown number left a message.
Nick Saban, the legendary University of Alabama football coach, was on the line, and he wanted to open a car dealership.
“I thought it was a prank call,” Agresti, now 52, recalls. “I thought one of my buddies left me a … prank Saban thing.”
As Forbes writes in a recent feature, within a few weeks, Saban and Agresti—whose Mercedes-Benz of Baton Rouge was considered one of the nation’s best-run dealers—met for a 30-minute sitdown that lasted four hours. The next day, they agreed to go into business together.
Today, their Dream Motor Group sells 20,000 Mercedes-Benzes a year, plus a couple hundred Infinitis and Ferraris, across nine dealerships in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas and Florida, where the pair bought two Miami-area stores in a $730 million deal in 2023. Annual revenues are nearing $2 billion.
Agresti—who runs the day-to-day and owns majority stakes in the dealerships—is now a billionaire, worth $1.1 billion. Saban, a minority partner in many of the ventures, likely isn’t far behind, meaning he’s set to become the first billionaire college football coach, thanks in no small part to a little-known car salesman with big ambition.
