In planning of the Selma Auto Mall in the early 1990's, Dwight G. Nelson, a life-long Selma resident and owner of his family's 83 year-old construction company, Lewis C. Nelson and Sons Inc., felt "In a community like this you have to do business differently. We looked at other car dealerships and what other people had done and we decided to do something we had never seen anyone else do." Dwight Nelson has always been a visionary and a builder at heart.

That was the idea Nelson had as he planned his auto mall in the early 1990s. Like the community in which he lived, he wanted a friendly culture and relaxed atmosphere in his stores. "In a community like this, you go to the grocery store and you know the clerks," Nelson says. "And the people there, they know your family. You have to do business differently."

In 1994, Nelson christened his current site with a Honda store. In 1995 he moved his Chevrolet franchise from a nearby location to the same campus and added a Mazda store. He landed Nissan, Hyundai and Suzuki. Also, Kia Motors America Inc. signed Nelson when one of their zone managers saw the Auto Mall's sign from Highway 99. "He stopped in here, took a look around and asked if we wanted a Kia store," Nelson says, "just like that."

Since then, Nelson has added Mitsubishi, built a new Honda image dealership, and expanded across highway 43 with a new Nissan image dealership and single point Hyundai dealership. The most recent expansion comes after a fifteen year committed attempt to secure the Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram brands for Selma. This is Nelson's second Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership, after his acquisition in 1991 of Liberty Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge-Jeep in Hanford, California (now Hanford Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram).