More than 1,200 people have been made redundant at Unipart Automotive and its head office closed after a failed bid to find a buyer for the business.
Based on Birmingham Business Park, the company operates a network of 180 branches and distribution hubs supplying car parts, workshop consumables and garage equipment.
It trades under the Unipart Automotive, Partco Autoparts and Express Factors brands and employs 1,813 people.
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Mark Orton, Will Wright and Jonny Marston from KPMG were appointed joint administrators to Unipart Automotive Ltd and immediately struck a deal with and Leeds-based Andrew Page.
The Parts Alliance has acquired 12 of Unipart Automotive branches while Andrew Page has bought 21 including the sites in Walsall, Stafford and Shrewsbury.
A total of 361 staff employed across these 33 sites have transferred with immediate effect but the remainder of the Unipart Automotive business has ceased to trade with 1,244 redundancies.
A total of 208 members of staff have been retained to assist the administrators.
All other remaining branches have closed including the head office, two sites in Birmingham and others in Brierley Hill, Coventry, Hub West Midlands, Kidderminster, Redditch, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton and Worcester. These sites employ 113 staff collectively.
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Mr Orton said: "Despite intensive efforts over recent weeks, a sale of the whole Unipart Automotive business could not be reached and a buyer could only be found for 33 of the sites on a going concern basis.
"Unfortunately, the business had been experiencing financial stress for a number of years, so the level of cash and further operational restructuring required to rescue a more substantial part of the business posed too much risk for most interested parties.
"Our team of employment specialists will be supporting all staff on completing redundancy forms and putting them in touch with job seeker services.
"We will now be reviewing what options are available for the remainder of the business, such as selling leasehold interests."
Unipart Automotive also directly supports more than 700 independent, owner-operated garages through its Unipart Car Care Centre programme and has 19 franchisees.
These companies fall outside of the administration and will continue to operate as normal.
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