www. PowersportsBusiness. com Powersports Business • September 2026 • 33

CONFERENCE

Nault’ s started in 1908 selling Schwinn bicycles delivered from Chicago and was one of the original importers of Raleigh Bicycles from the UK. By the 1940s, the dealership started putting Whizzer gas motors on pedal bikes.

Nault didn’ t get a letter back from Honda, at least not right away. It wasn’ t until 1958— five years after the original letter— that Dick heard back from the Japanese manufacturer.

“ Five years, think about that,” says Curt Grenier, CEO and shareholder of Nault’ s Powersports.“ And it’ s been history ever since.”

Nault’ s would become an official Honda dealer— one of the first in the U. S.— and received its first bike in 1960.

The dealership didn’ t stop at Honda; it now has 10 powersports brands and has been named the No. 1 Suzuki and No. 1 Beta dealer in the country several years in a row and recognized as a top−10 Honda and Kawasaki dealer. The dealership has expanded to four locations and is part of the original 10 Honda dealerships in the U. S.

FROM AUTO TO POWERSPORTS Grenier, who currently runs all four of Nault’ s dealerships throughout New Hampshire, was a GM on the automotive side before transitioning to powersports. He recalls running into Dick at his auto dealership, who for years tried to recruit him to come over to powersports.

“ I would tell him,‘ Yeah, yeah … I want to, but I’ m making a ton of money,’” Grenier says.

But Dick’ s recruitment was consistent, and there was one thing he told Grenier about what separates auto from powersports that really resonated.

“ He said we sell fun. We don’ t sell anything anybody needs; we sell what people want. And eventually I told him,‘ I might take you up on that offer.’”

Grenier began working at Nault’ s in 2014 and, by 2016, became a shareholder. He says after spending the first part of his career managing multi-rooftop car dealerships, his approach was to bring in some of the same principles from auto into powersports.

“ The motorcycle business is 10 years behind the car business. And I would say once I learned how to take automotive models and apply them to this model, we’ re probably now four to five years behind the automotive business and catching up.”

When Grenier first came over to Nault’ s, he said he had tons of ideas to bring to the table. The automotive industry knows how to run a lean system, he says, with some dealership groups managing more than 1,000 rooftops. Grenier’ s initial goal was to operate like an auto dealership, but instead of running 1,300 dealers, he just needed to do it with four.

But one major difference between auto and powersports, Grenier says he noticed immediately, was the dealer management systems. On the auto side, a DMS is applied to only one manufacturer. This simplifies use of the system and lets dealers take advantage of more

Dick Nault, who died in April 2026, was a third-generation owner of Nault’ s, and brought in Honda motorcycles in the 1950s.