THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 6, 1995 TAG: 9501060513
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EDWARD POWER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
It was part fraternal reunion, part occasion for reminiscence and large part homage to a man who showed the way to success.
Thursday night, nearly 20 car dealers from Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere paid tribute to retiring auto dealer Joshua P. Darden, who recently agreed to sell his interest in his family's Colonial auto dealership. The dealership, Colonial Auto Group, has been bought by Charlotte-based megadealer Rick Hendrick.
But most of the talk was not about the future, but about the past - when the men in attendance apprenticed under Darden.
``Probably if there's any commonality here,'' said Charles Barker, a Lexus, Toyota and Infiniti dealer from Hampton Roads, ``no one had ever sold a car before they came to Colonial.''
Barker talked about the training that he and others received from Darden, who instilled in the people who worked on his lots a credo that ``You don't let a customer go.''
Otto LeBron, a retired national sales manager with Chevrolet, recalled how Darden sold himself on the importance of training before he sold his employees on it. ``He was very big in training,'' LeBron said, ``but he trained himself first.''
LeBron went on to say that ``a lot of the problems in the car business were from lack of adequate training. Don't kick the education part of your dealership out,'' he told the gathered graduates of Darden's ``school of business.''
LeBron also said Darden became a handy resource for the industry as a whole, in particular Chevrolet.
But Darden's service to the industry was not the main focus last night. Primarily, it was on the group he has come to call the Colonial Auto Group ``Hall of Fame.'' Among the local dealership owners whom Darden includes are Barker, Ken Hall of Hall Auto Mall and Tom Riddle of Riddle Acura.
Alex Jones, an Ahoskie, N.C., car businessman, said of his time with Colonial: ``It shaped my life, headed me in a direction I wouldn't have taken on my own.''
Don Williams, a long-time executive with Colonial Auto Group, said: ``Josh has a way about himself of trying to keep things intense.''
Finally, one dealer, Scott Crabtree, of Pohanka Lexus in Chantilly, Va., said that Darden's reputation for training and integrity had spread far beyond the group of people gathered Thursday night. Crabtree recalled meeting a dealer in North Carolina who asked about how Crabtree had gotten into the car business. When Crabtree told him about Darden and Colonial Chevrolet, the man said, ``Yeah I've heard about that dealer.'' The man said he had heard that nearly two dozen people had graduated from Darden's dealership and gone on to run their own businesses.
``The last thing he said,'' Crabtree recalled, was, ``One thing I've heard is that they were all honest, straightforward people.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
JIM WALKER/Staff
Attending the function were - front row, from left - Grady Harris,
Scott Crabtree, Randy Morris, Ken Hall, Joshua P. Darden, Charles
Barker, Frank Davis, Tom Riddle and Alan Rice, and - back row, from
right - Bud Beasley, Wib Davenport, George R. Pelton, Roland Walton,
David Greer, Alex Jones, Don Williams, Ernest Hodge, Nathan Drory
and Lee Edwards.
by CNB