About Us

Family Service You Can Trust

Established in 1932, we are still a family business and have grown to become one of the most successful Honda dealer groups in the country and in 2014 became the official Franchised Dealer for Suzuki Cars in Plymouth & East Cornwall. In 2015, 2016, 2017 & 2018 we won the Honda UK Small Dealer Group of the Year Award a testament to our customer service and high standards.

From modest beginnings we now have seven dealerships throughout Devon and Cornwall, from Hayle in the west to Plymstock in the east. We now employ over 100 staff across two counties and in a year sell over 2,000 new and used cars, look after over 23,000 customer’s cars and change over 30,000 litres of engine oil! We have a dedicated Customer relationship management department based at our Weston Mill dealership whose aim is to keep in regular contact with our customers to ensure they are completely satisfied with the services we provide.

Did you know that Rowes Haven’t always been about cars?

The Cornish Commercial

The Rowe Hillmaster lorries and buses were made in Cornwall from 1954 to 1962. They were custom built vehicles, produced specifically for use in the West Country. Being very adaptable, however, they soon became a fairly common sight on British Roads, whilst a number were exported to Spain, Canada and New Zealand.

The Hillmaster Ideal

Cornwall’s roads are different from most of the other roads in Britain, brought about by the very nature of the County. It’s only just over 40 miles across at its widest, on the eastern ‘frontier’ with the rest of England. In West Cornwall, you could just about throw a stone from the North coast to the South coast. In such a confined place, the roads tend to be very narrow and also very hilly. The good thing is that the hills tend to be fairly short. The nature of these roads meant that to get the optimum performance from any vehicle it needed to have the right specification. It was with this in mind that the Rowe Hillmaster vehicles were built.

They were narrower than most commercial vehicles, they weighed less, and had the correct gearing to enable them to be at home on West Country roads. The lorries and buses were built to suit the customers’ needs, in other words, they were custom-built. This was at the time when you bought what was available, it was a seller’s market, but Rowe’s were in the forefront of providing what the customer wanted.