I've driven past Imperial Group on Minnesota Avenue more times than I can count — that strip between downtown and 12th Street where the older dealerships sit, the ones that predate the 85th Street auto mall sprawl. The building doesn't shout at you. No balloon arches, no waving inflatable tube man. Just a straightforward lot with inventory you can actually see from the street.
What strikes me about Imperial is how long they've been here. This isn't some flash-in-the-pan operation that showed up during the pandemic used car boom. They've been selling vehicles in Sioux Falls since before I moved here, back when Minnesota Avenue was *the* car-buying corridor and dealerships hadn't yet migrated west toward the interstate.
Inside, it's clear they're working with what they have — the building shows its age in ways the newer places on Louise don't. But the sales floor has that lived-in feeling of a place that's seen thousands of deals close, where the coffee's always on and the staff knows the inventory without checking a screen. They specialize in used vehicles, which means you're not paying for the new-car-smell markup, but you're also navigating that inherent gamble of someone else's trade-in history.
The 4.2 rating tells you something honest — people who buy here aren't writing five-star love letters, but they're not torching the place in reviews either. It's middle-ground territory. Some customers rave about finding exactly what they needed at a price that worked. Others mention the usual used-car-lot friction points: financing hiccups, condition surprises, the occasional communication gap.
On a city where auto-buying increasingly means driving to the western edge and walking into a glass palace, Imperial Group holds its Minnesota Avenue ground — a working dealership in a working building, selling cars to people who need them.
— Grace