If you travel up I-75 from Atlanta, 45 miles to the north, you will run into Adairsville, Georgia and Parkway Ford. Sam Smith has built this small town dealership into a motorsports powerhouse. Everything you see in the dealership reflects his passion for racing. From his friendships with some of racingıs greats, his sonıs current involvement as a driver to one of the great collections of racing memorabiliaParkway Ford spells racing, which translates into repeat customers, fan loyalty and one unique dealership.
Q: Racing is a big part of Parkway Ford. How did you get so involved personally? My involvement started in 1984. I had a dealership very close to Bill Elliottıs racing operation when he was with the Melling team. I got involved with them as a weekender, traveling to and from the races for a number of years, and it just grew from there. Q: Were you working with a dealership at the time? I had my own dealership. Iıve been in the Ford business for seventeen years. Q: Tell me about you and Bill Elliott. My relationship with Bill Elliott stems from back even before he became involved in Winston Cup. I knew him as a boy during the years he came up the ladder. Obviously, Ford has been a big backer in his career. Just being involved and going to the races as a team member during Bill Elliottıs Melling days probably is an all around big story for me. Walking up and down pit road with the Coors racing uniform on. Q: Everywhere I look in your dealership I see racing. Well, our involvement in racing is 15-16 years running. As a youngster I watched my first Daytona 500 in 1965. Iıve had a love for it my whole life. Now we sell three car lines in our muscle car dealership with Saleen and SVT Cobras, and now weıre selling the Rousch performance packages as well. We built a tremendous reputation not only in North Georgia, but throughout the Southeast and even as far away as Texas. Q: You have sponsored some of NASCARıs greats and more. What has it meant to your business? Weıve been involved with Jody Ridley since 1985 as an associate sponsor. Jody was NASCARıs Rookie of the Year in 1980 and our involvement with Jody with Ford MotorSports is probably one of our biggest involvements, along with Bill Elliott. We provided them with support vehicles, vans and trucks, etc. Currently weıre doing some sponsorship programs with Mark Thompsonıs ARCA car out of Cartersville, Georgia. Those three in particular, plus Roy Hillıs drag racing team out of Sophia, North Carolina. Weıre currently doing a deal where weıre giving them a couple of vans to use. Q: What about sales, service, parts - what kinds of things do you do that are motorsports-related? Throughout our dealership weıve got motorsports apparel, signs, banners, etc. We added a new showroom a couple of years ago just for our Saleens and Cobras and our motorsports sales. We primarily have it decorated for muscle cars with Saleen and Cobra banners and signs hanging up. We have some Friday night local car shows here two or three times a year. Once a year we have an annual motorsports promotion in the fall that includes two or three Winston Cup cars. Weıve even had a couple of drivers signing autographs for a few of the shows. Q: What do the people who work in your dealership think of motorsports? Iıve got a number of employees who have been with me over a ten-year span, a few over fifteen years. One of them maintains and takes care of the race rigs and travels the highways for us. Our sales manager has got a short track truck deal heıs putting together. A couple of mechanics are trained to work on the SVT Cobras and Saleen cars, so theyıre definitely involved. Q: You are one of the biggest Saleen dealers in the Southeast. How did that happen? In 1995 we were working an outdoor car show at Atlanta Motor Speedway with a couple of our rigs and had six or seven cars on display and we were approached by Saleen after they saw our setup. They wanted us to be a part of the team and to promote and sell their cars through our dealership. They liked what they saw in us. Weıre very involved in indoor and outdoor car shows and motorsports shows and it just grew from that. Q: Now your son, Derrick, is racing a Ford muscle car in drag racing. How did he gravitate towards drag racing instead of oval track racing? My son, Derrick, began to get interested in drag racing six or seven years ago. We met racers at some of the NHRA events and he decided that he wanted to get more involved with it. I figured that if he wanted to go a different avenue than the circle tracking racing that Iıve always been involved and interested in, then maybe we could do this too and pick up some new business along the way from folks that we havenıt been in contact with in the past. A couple years ago we built a 1995 Mustang to race in the Hot Rod Magazine and American Auto Sports Ford touring series, made some good moves with it and began to pick up some interest from sponsors who wanted to be part of our program once they saw us at racetracks and shows. Derrickıs involvement with Saleen, one of the sponsors of our program, has grown tremendously in the past fifteen months. Q: So how does your sonıs racing translate into business? At the shows and racetracks we have a lot of people that have seen our cars in magazines. Weıve been fortunate enough to be published in four or five magazines. A lot of folks took a real interest in our team throughout the Southeast and even up as far as Pennsylvania. We get fan letters and people show up at the tracks wanting to take pictures of our equipment, the trucks, trailers and cars. Derrick even does autograph signing at some of the events. We sold some new trucks to some people down in Tampa, Florida who we race with. Weıve also made a lot of friends. Q: How much influence does motorsports have in the service department business? Weıve been fortunate enough to be a multiple winner of Fordıs North American Award for Customer Excellence. Training some of our technicians with SVT Cobras and the Saleen, we began to draw some business off the streets to muscle up some of the Mustangs for the customers. Putting different racing components on street version cars, we built a reputation with people. For miles around us, people bring their cars here because they know weıre trained in motorsports add-on accessories and parts. Q: Itıs obvious that racing plays a major role in Parkway Fordıs marketing, advertising and sales. Where do you see racing going in the next five years, and how will your involvement change? I donıt see an end to the growth of NASCAR and the Winston Cup series. I donıt know how much bigger it can get without running off into different avenues. I see it as a tremendous boost to racing in general - the way NASCAR and NHRA in particular have grown. I donıt see an end in sight, except I see it almost getting too big so that it may need to break into different divisions with all the new racetracks and all the involvement with corporate sponsor programs. NHRA in the last five years has begun to get a lot of national publicity with the TNN and ESPN television packages. We want to grow into more of a NHRA package deal with our race team. We have a lot of proposals with different race teams for Derrickıs future - one being Roy Hillıs team out of North Carolina. Weıre trying to put a package together where Derrick will run in one of his NHRA Pro Trucks for the next season. Q: Any suggestions for a store similar to yours not being in a metropolitan area? How can they use motorsports to help make their business grow and take care of the racing loyalty? Iıve become friends with a lot of dealers in the years gone by and they know how aggressive we are in the performance motorsports industry and promotions through our dealership. Some of them are in racing and some of them go different ways of promoting business, but the ones that are looking at us as a good example of how we built our business around motorsports in general the last fifteen-seventeen years know how we have made our business grow through these efforts. Some even buy cars from us.