Ernie Garcia II is a major shareholder in Carvana, an online platform for the trading of used cars. The Phoenix-based company is run by Garcia's son and reported revenue of $13.7 billion in 2024. Garcia is also the founder and chairman of DriveTime Automotive Group, the Phoenix-based operator of used-car dealerships.
Garcia's wealth stems from his stake in Carvana, an online marketplace for used cars.
He has an economic stake of about 24% in Carvana through his ownership of Class A units, which are exchangeable for Class A shares at a 4-to-5 ratio, according to an August 2025 Form 4 filing. This excludes equity held in trusts that he controls for the benefit of his son and grandchildren.
He also owns 75% of closely held DriveTime Automotive Group, based on a 2017 insurance company filing. DriveTime had around $3.9 billion in annualized revenue as of March 2025, according to a July 2025 KBRA credit report. It's valued using the price-to-earnings, price-to-book value and enterprise value-to-sales multiples of three publicly traded peers: America's Car-Mart, Carmax, Sonic Automotive.
Garcia declined to comment on his net worth.
Ernie Garcia II was born in May 1957 and became a real estate developer in Arizona.
Garcia pleaded guilty to bank fraud in 1990 for his bit roles in the demise of California thrift Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which sparked a national political scandal. Garcia avoided prison time by testifying for federal prosecutors. He received three years of probation and was fined $50, the minimum fine the court could assess. He has since had his civil rights restored, according to DriveTime filings.
He laid the groundwork for DriveTime in the 1990s, when he bought a rental-car company called Ugly Duckling out of bankruptcy. Merging that operation with a financing company, he built a financier of used cars for subprime borrowers.
Garcia's son, Ernie III, joined DriveTime in 2007 after earning an engineering degree from Stanford. He helped the company develop tools to assess consumer credit, set vehicle prices and structure deals, a Carvana biography says. He was named CEO at Carvana's founding in 2012. The company went public in 2017.