THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 5, 1995 TAG: 9501050464
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
At first, the benefits of the training program Josh Darden set up at Colonial Chevrolet might have seemed one-sided.
Darden would train salespeople and managers, then help them buy dealerships that in some cases ended up competing with Colonial.
At best, he lost an employee he paid to train; at worst, he gained a competitor.
Two dozen Darden proteges gather tonight to tease - and pay homage to - the man who got them started while building his own automobile empire. Darden has sold his interest in the Colonial dealerships and is retiring from the car business.
Among those in attendance will be Otto LeBron, a retired national sales manager with Chevrolet, who plans to needle Darden that the training program worked too well.
``My theme will be, he did it better than we needed him to,'' LeBron said. ``He spawned a few guys who are competing with us (Chevrolet).''
Why did Darden conduct the training program?
Colonial got more out of it than would at first seem apparent. By providing its top managers with opportunities to advance, Colonial attracted other high-quality salespeople and managers.
``It became apparent that if you had talent and you came with us and you did well, if we didn't have a dealership for you to run we would find you one somewhere else,'' Darden said. ``We just kept attracting very strong young people who were coming into the business.''
Darden has a name for those who went through the Colonial training program, then went on to own or manage their own dealerships: the Colonial Auto Group ``Hall of Fame.'' Among local dealership owners whom Darden includes in the group are Charles Barker of Charles Barker Lexus, Toyota and Infiniti, Ken Hall of Hall Auto Mall and Tom Riddle of Riddle Acura.
Lee Edwards, 29, the son of the new president of the National Automobile Dealers Association, spent two years with Colonial and came up with a more academic-sounding name for the training program.
``That's the Darden business school,'' Edwards says, in a twiston the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration named after Darden's uncle. ``I definitely think you could say to some extent its a school of business.''
Darden, 58, is selling Colonial Auto Group to Charlotte-based megadealer Rick Hendrick. The banquet in Norfolk tonight has the dual purpose of serving as a first-time gathering for the ``Hall of Fame'' members and as a thank-you to Darden.
Darden says that the management training at Colonial began as informal schooling, but became more official over the years. Colonial - so named because Darden's father, Pretlow, set up shop on Colonial Avenue in 1930 - moved to the suburbs in 1968. That's when Darden took over the company from his father.
Business boomed, and up-and-coming managers and salespeople tried to get a job at the car lot on Virginia Beach Boulevard. They had to be quickly instilled with the company philosophy; Darden brought in speakers, sent his managers to seminars and showed them training films.
Charles Barker started as a salesman at Colonial in 1971, and worked his way up to become Darden's partner. Barker remembers that Darden even brought in university professors to teach business courses to trainees.
``He was never afraid to spend money to develop his people, because in the end he knew he was going to get a better performance,'' Barker said. ``When it was time to go someplace, they went with his blessing.''
Harry Land, a Portsmouth native who worked at Colonial from 1976 through 1982, said he took advantage of every opportunity Darden and his then-partner, Charles Barker, presented. But Land didn't realize he was going through a training program at the time.
``You're attending a meeting one week, and it may not seem like much, but after a year you've been to 52 of them,'' Land said. ``The accumulated effect is a degree in car-ology.''
Barker remembers how far Land has progressed from the day he answered a blind newspaper ad and interviewed for a job at Colonial - wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Today, Land is president of 10 dealerships in the Raleigh-Durham area, an achievement he credits to Darden and Barker.
When Land wanted to buy into the business, Darden and Barker arranged for an attorney to draft a contract and research his prospective business partners.
``You just can't know what kind of peace of mind that gives you when you're stepping out in this business,'' Land said.
Likewise, Roland Walton got into General Motors' dealership development program for minorities through working at Colonial. He now owns a Pontiac dealership in Fairfax, something he says would not have been possible without Darden. Darden helped Walton finance his first dealership in Boston.
``That's the most difficult thing to get involved in - the automobile business - if you're not in a family that has one,'' Walton said. ``Josh helped me get into the business.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Josh Darden has sold his interest in the Colonial car dealerships
and is retiring from the business.
KEYWORDS: JOSH DARDEN by CNB