Thrifty Car Rental Franchise Owner Tom Celona Awarded Auto Rental News' Executive Leadership Award THRIFTY CAR RENTAL TOM CELONA Tom Celona of Thrifty Car Rental, winner of Auto Rental News' 5th Annual Executive Leadership Award, and a Thrifty franchise owner for 30 years in Providence, Rhode Island. (PRNewsFoto)[JL] LAS VEGAS, NV USA 10/03/2000

3 October 2000

    LAS VEGAS, Oct. 3 Tom Celona, a Thrifty Car Rental
franchise owner in Providence, Rhode Island for 30 years, was honored with
Auto Rental News' 5th Annual Executive Leadership Award, the magazine
announced at the industry's annual Car Rental Show today.
    (Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20001003/DATU015 )
    The award is open to all car and truck rental industry managers and
executives, and was developed to honor excellence in rental management, and
the accomplishments, abilities and personalities of individual leaders in the
auto rental industry.
    The award was presented to Celona by Russell Bruno, Executive Director of
the Association for Car and Truck Rental Independents and Franchisees (ACTIF),
and last year's award recipient.  Previous award winners have included Sandy
Miller, CEO of Budget Group, Inc., and Ken Elder, Thrifty Car Rental's
franchise owner in the Washington, D.C. area for more than 30 years.
    Celona, who was also recently named the Rhode Island Small Business Person
of the Year for 2000 by the Small Business Administration, purchased the
Thrifty franchise for the state of Rhode Island in 1969 and opened the
company's 21st location.  (Thrifty has since grown to 1,200 locations
internationally, so he has been with the company in its formative stages).
For 12 consecutive years, he has served as chairman of Thrifty's National
Advertising Committee, a body of franchise owners elected by their peers to
represent their interests in planning national marketing activities.  He has
also received the company's prestigious TRACStar Award for franchise
excellence for eight out of ten years of the award's existence.
    Thrifty Car Rental, with its affiliate Thrifty Car Sales, is a subsidiary
of Thrifty, Inc.  Thrifty Car Rental is one of the world's largest
international car rental franchise networks, consisting of over 1,200
locations in 62 countries around the world.  Thrifty Car Sales is a franchised
retail used car sales network with plans to have 60 U.S. locations by January
2001.  Thrifty, Inc. is a subsidiary of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, Inc.
.