How and why did you make the auto industry a career?

During the 1980s, I sold a lot of computers and hardware. Then I got the idea with some guys to invent a game for Nintendo called Action 52. That took the rest of the decade.

After that, in 1990, I got into the car business by accident. A friend asked me to help him at a big Toyota store in South Florida. I went in for a few days to close deals and got bit by the snake. I’ve been at it ever since. I took over at City Kia three years ago.

What is your favorite part about working in the auto industry?

I love people, and they are what really keep me excited and engaged every day.

City Kia is one of the highest-ranked Hyundai buying stores in the country in new car sales and is top two in the country in certified pre-owned vehicles. We’ve come a long way, but what keeps me engaged is the family we built and the customers. I love giving a solution to a person in a tough situation so they can go on working and have a reliable vehicle, especially in Florida.

What was your best day ever in the car business?

I’ve had so many. After the 2008 recession, doing Cash for Clunkers was a whole new way of selling cars, and it was so much fun getting these old, beat-up cars. The government subsidized the trade-in, and we crushed the cars.

We do some charity events at different levels at different locations. There’s one case where the mom was single with three children. Two had cancer, and the other one had a rare genetic disease. I donated a car to that family, paid for a whole Christmas dinner and gave them gift cards to buy each other presents. That was a big deal for me. It humbled me to help them.

Victories are another thing we celebrate; it was a big deal when our dealership became number one in Central Florida. But really, every day is a great day. The best day is every day that God lets me open my eyes, sit behind the wheel and do what I do.

How did you get to where you are now with Kia?

I was a partner in two dealerships down south for many years, and I had one of the top-performing stores in the country. It was a Hyundai store. We also had a Kia store and many other franchises.

In 2016, I decided to do something different and became a fixer. People would hire me to fix stores that were in trouble. I’d work there for 12–16 months and then move on to the next project. It was interesting and heartbreaking at the same time, but you are never done. Some people do that for their whole career, but it wasn’t for me.

I decided to find a new store in a metro market where I could make a difference. Then I met Curt Werner. Curt is the son of the founder of Werner Service & Trucking, one of the world’s biggest trucking companies. He invested in City Kia in 2004. Curt also has Werner Hyundai, Werner Genesis and Werner Kia in Tallahassee.

City Kia is the big one. It’s the mother ship, and that’s why I chose it, but I’ve got more customers than I can handle. That’s a good problem to have, but it’s also tough. It’s like having hundred-pound rocks and trying to fit them in a five-pound bag. Our slogan at City Kia is “Home of the Best Guest Experience.” I can’t provide that experience with the volume we do currently. We want everybody to be happy, which isn’t easy when customers have to wait longer and longer.

We are expanding City Kia’s service department to alleviate wait times. We bought a building about a mile away, and when it opens, we will have the largest Kia service department in Florida. The new building will probably make us the city’s fastest intake store for Kia. I’ll be able to efficiently and quickly service more people daily. Our current building will be the customer building. When my new building opens, we will triple our capacity in one night and do all the heavy repairs and used car reconditioning off-site.

How do you recruit young technicians who are looking into the industry?

We do several things. For example, we use Hireology and work with Universal Technical Institute (UTI). UTI is the largest technical school in Florida, with one of the largest technician training programs, and one of its buildings is directly behind City Kia. We are fence-to-fence neighbors and have a great partnership. It was very expensive initially, but I believe it’s worth it.

There are many reasons why a technician would want to work at City Kia. We began working with UTI two years ago. When things slowed down because of the pandemic, we couldn’t go on-site, but now we’ve created our own City Kia classroom inside of UTI. Their students include people trying the technical side because technicians are hard to get, and they make great money. We have a consistent stream of students who can work while training to become certified techs. We reimburse their tuition 100%, and I’ll hire them as they graduate. As long as they work here, we’ll pay off their student loan until it’s paid. We also give them a starter tool kit and a tool allowance every month to get more and more tools. Kia provides on-site, on-the-job training, too.

Rumor has it that EVs will need much less service, manufacturers will handle it, and the service bay income will diminish. Do you think that is true?

Florida has few charging stations, so we’re years away from a real problem. The infrastructure must be there before EV sales increase to 15% or 20%.

The customers who are buying EVs are very specific. They want it for a specific reason.

The general public is interested but is not ready to commit. People are worried about charge times and finding a place to charge their cars. If you find a high-powered charger and someone is using it when you get there, you have to wait for them to finish. It can be at least a 40-minute stop if someone else takes 15-20 minutes to finish before you can even begin charging.

As we eventually transition to EVs, how will that impact service?

We’re so new to this that I haven’t seen any EVs with many miles. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and we don’t know the impact yet. But our new service building was a multimillion-dollar expense. We wouldn’t have spent the money if I believed no one would need the service in five years. I believe gas engines will be around for quite a long time, although they will become more efficient.

Some people will want EVs, and some people will still want hybrids. We thought many hybrid people would jump automatically into an EV; some do, but some get another hybrid. They don’t want a full EV; they want to be able to rely on their gas tank.

Moving to EVs will be a paradigm shift that will take time. In the last year, all the manufacturers have come out with new EVs. Examples include the Ford Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning, our Kia EV6, the Niro, the Hyundai Ionic, the Mercedes EQA, and a slew of beautiful electric vehicles from Audi. Everybody has a new shiny toy, and I think everybody is still learning how to play with it.

EVs will be another product, like hybrids. Everybody didn’t buy a hybrid when they came out. Hyundai Kia made a $2 billion investment in Georgia to build an EV and EV battery plant because customers can get a tax credit if their car is built in the U.S. We’re excited about that. I think Korea will also make a big advance in hydrogen engines soon.

I believe our technology is going faster than our ability to correct issues, and fixing something is different than building it. Some of the new navigation systems are so sophisticated that they get bugs in them and lock up. I don’t think anyone knows how to fix electric engines. We replace them. That’s why it takes Tesla forever when their engines have problems.

You’ll still see EV customers a lot. Their vehicles will need brakes and tires. They will also need lead-acid batteries to start the engine and power secondary electronics. (Some models might also have timing belts, but most won’t.) A 30,000-mile service will consist of checking the battery and rotating the tires.

What will happen to our service business and profitability if this EV thing takes off? There will be a decade before we start feeling a pinch. We’ll have enough knowledge of this new technology by then to adapt. But to me, it’s all talk until that happens. When it does, we must continue to serve our legacy customers while reinventing ourselves and thinking outside the box.

Tesla has been the frontrunner for EVs, but are franchise dealers the legacy manufacturers’ secret weapon to overtake Tesla?

Absolutely. We talk to customers and deliver a good experience. Tesla stores are impersonal, and customer service is poor. Tesla has a unique product and autonomous driving, which is new and cool, but Mercedes and Audi can compete with them now, and I guess we’ll be there soon, too. Then again, many people don’t want the car driving. There have been some bad accidents because people pushed the limits on the car, and something went wrong. Things happen lightning-fast.

Let’s talk about the Kia EV6. Do you have them, and are they selling?

They moved more quickly when they first came out last year. There was a waitlist, but availability is better now.

I have a GT on the floor of my showroom. I drove it last weekend, and even though I’ve always had fast cars, I’ve never been in anything like that. The vehicle’s design is amazing, too, with the way the dashboard flows and the visibility inside the car. I couldn’t find a blind spot, and the car handles like a dream.

Kia has exploded onto the scene in the U.S. and globally. It has some of the top products in the industry right now. Hyundai has always been the big brother because it has more capacity and outsold Kia, but Kia currently outsells Hyundai in Central Florida.

Any last thoughts?

I think we all have concerns about the future of what’s gonna happen to our service business and our profitability when this EV thing really takes off. I think it’s going to be a decade before it becomes a reality. By then, I believe we’ll have enough knowledge of this new technology to adapt it. We have to be adaptive. We have to think outside the box. We’re going to have to reinvent how we do business in the future. We will continue to service our legacy customers with their traditional ICE engines. But we will have to reinvent how we treat the EV6 and our EV customers.