Well, they did it to me again! Just as I'm putting the finishing touches on another Cover Story on one of America's most successful dealers, Republic buys his stores. This is the third time that this has happened in my last nine issues. First Mike Maroone, then Red McCombs and now, Hank Torian.
Between the time when I interviewed them and the printing of their Cover Story issue, they sold to Republic (Red sold only his Austin, Texas stores). At least I know I have good taste in Cover Story Dealers. All kidding aside, Hank Torian is/was a great dealer and a helluva nice guy, so we'll run his cover story as is.
You might have noticed that this issue is a little heavier than usual and it's not just because we use better paper than our competitors. It's because we broke our own record for sales in an issue by 20%. We beat our best issue (January 1999) by $23,000. Two years ago we did under $100,000 in our January/February 1997 issue. It's hard for me to believe that this year, our January and February issues did over $271,000 (a 171% increase).
I know, I know, I couldn't have done it without YOU. And I know these dollar amounts may sound somewhat paltry to a car dealer, but my margins are quite different from yours, believe me. I'll just keep doing my job of helping you do your job, you keep doing your job and reading this magazine, and that will continue to make my other job of having our ad sales accurately reflect our readership very easy.
There's a lot of talk about the battle that is raging over the future of retail automobile sales. Jim Ziegler (pg. 6) and Sheldon Sandler (pg. 8) weigh in on the future of family-owned retail automobile businesses. Hank Torian and I discussed it in the cover story (pg. 28). Hell, I even talked about it in USA Today's business section. Of course, you know which side I took if you read that piece. If not, here are my actual quotes from the article entitled "Retailers Rewrite Auto Sales Rules": "Dealers will do whatever it takes to survive" and "Dealers are not going to just watch (big retailers) take market share away from them. They will fight tooth and nail."
What did you expect? We are the dealer advocate publication. Now read Ziegler's article and go out there and show 'em who it is that built this business!
For you dealers attending the NADA Convention, I hope to see you in San Francisco. If you see me, please say "Hi." I'm your biggest fan!