Contrary to reports that DT Dobie has wound up after 76 years, the company did not shut down. What actually happened is that its business was folded into CFAO Motors Kenya as part of a restructuring that took effect on April 1, 2023.
That deal saw DT Dobie’s assets and operations — including its dealerships for Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Hyundai trucks, and Sinotruk — transferred into CFAO Motors Kenya, which already handled Toyota, Yamaha, Hino, Automark used cars, Winpart spare parts, and the Autofast quick service network. Together, the merged business became Kenya’s biggest automotive distributor, with the widest dealer and service footprint in the country.
The confusion stems from a notice published this year stating that DT Dobie and Company (Kenya) Ltd had entered liquidation. That process is real, but it is essentially the winding up of the old corporate shell of DT Dobie. The business itself — the staff, the showrooms, the franchises — has continued seamlessly under the CFAO Motors Kenya name.
DT Dobie, founded in 1949 by British army veteran Colonel David Theodore Dobie, was for decades synonymous with luxury cars in Kenya, especially the Mercedes-Benz franchise. But after losing several major brands in the past decade and following Toyota Tsusho’s acquisition of its parent company CFAO, it made sense to consolidate.
So, while the brand name is disappearing, its operations are not. They live on inside CFAO Motors Kenya, which now combines Toyota’s dominance with DT Dobie’s multi-brand portfolio to anchor the Japanese group’s growth strategy in East Africa.
