Eric Freeman
Founder & Owner · Since 1990
Known around here for being on the floor before anyone else, every day.
The Freeman Way
Family-owned. Hand-picked. Honest.
Three decades of doing this one way. Ours.
We've spent thirty-four years selling pre-owned European cars in Oregon. Long enough to know that the part most dealers get wrong is the part that's hardest to fake: staying the same.
Eric Freeman opened the first Freeman Motor Company in 1990 on Portland Road in Salem. Six cars on the lot. A lean-to office that flooded twice that first winter.
For the first year, deals were written on the trunks of cars. Eric did the test drives, the paperwork, the wash, and the follow-up calls. By twelve months in, there was an office. By eighteen months, a second tech. The cars were always European. The handshake was always the same.
I was writing deals on the trunks of cars at an old gas station on Portland Road. By the one-year mark, we had an office. Three decades later, we're still here. Still answering when you call.
Marshall Zoerner washed cars on weekends starting in 2000. He was sixteen. He stayed through high school, through college, through every department.
By 2010 he was running sales. By 2015 he was a partner. The partnership wasn't transactional — it was the natural result of two people doing the work the same way for fifteen years. Today Marshall runs the day-to-day. Eric still walks the lot every morning.
The Portland showroom opened in 2017. We didn't want a bigger building. We wanted a quieter one.
Both locations are indoor — climate-controlled, dust-free, lit so you can actually see the car. We borrowed the design language from boutique European watch retailers, not from car dealerships. Free coffee. A play area for kids. No commission-driven salespeople following you across the floor.
Most of us have been here longer than we've been anywhere else.
NIADA · One of fewer than 1,000 nationwide
2018 · 2020 · 2022 · 2024
A+ rating · Member since 1994
Top-tier transparency partner
National Independent Auto Dealers
We've never run a Super Bowl ad. We don't sponsor jumbotrons. The neighborhoods that bought cars from us in the nineties are the same ones we put back into now.
Our annual meet-up where car culture and sneaker culture share a parking lot. DJs, food trucks, eighty cars, four hundred pairs of shoes, one Saturday in June.
Join the next one →A small booklet you pick up at either showroom. Each test drive earns a stamp from a partner café — Stumptown, Heart, Coava, Archive, and a half-dozen Salem roasters.
Get my passport →4.8★ across 499 verified reviews.
Bought my X5 sight unseen from Boise. The car arrived cleaner than they described. Marshall personally followed up two months later.
I've bought a lot of cars. This was the first time the price didn't change between phone and showroom.
Service department fixed something my BMW dealer couldn't figure out in three visits. Half the price too.
Was ready to be talked down to. Wasn't. First dealership in a long time that treated me like an adult.