After 29 years at the helm of Foreman Ford Sales in Dauphin, Barry Foreman has ridden off into the sunset.
The new dealer principal is John Kelleher (Kelleher Ford Sales in Brandon) while the managing partner at the renamed Kelleher Ford Sales Dauphin is Chuck Burton, Kelleher's longtime general sales manager.
"I just felt that it was time for younger people to take over," Barry Foreman says.
Foreman became involved in the auto industry 32 years ago while still a teacher at Rivers in western Manitoba. Rivers was an air force base at that time. When the air force pulled out of town, the Ford dealer in town closed.
"I always had a passion for cars," Foreman says.
"When the Ford dealer closed, I bought the building and operated it as a service station outside of school hours. I also started buying Fords from the Brandon dealer and selling them locally. After a while, Ford of Canada approached me to open my own Ford dealership."
He started out in Rivers but after a couple of years relocated to Dauphin, a larger community (population is about 8,000) just north of Riding Mountain National Park. Chuck Burton is excited about his new role at the dealership. "This is a well-established dealership with great people (the staff numbers just over 30)," Burton says. "We carry 150 to 200 new and used vehicles. We are looking forward to continued growth."
As for the newly retired Foreman, he is taking at least the next year off. He says he is looking forward to travel and seeing more of Canada.
"If I miss the auto business, I can always drop in at my son, Kent's Honda store in Brandon."
In Steinbach, Ledingham GM is in the midst of a major renovation that will see a new three-lane drive-thru added to the building and the relocation of its in-house Waffle Shop Restaurant downstairs.
"We are building to conform to GM's Image 2000 program," says dealer principal Kent Ledingham. "We are also gutting and redoing the showroom with our Waffle Shop Restaurant as one of the centrepieces."
Work on the project started at the beginning of June and is expected to be completed by year end.
The Ledingham family came to Steinbach four years ago when they bought Brookdale Pontiac Buick. By the end of the year (2004), the family had also acquired Penner Chev Olds. They merged the two dealerships in November, 2006.
"This is a big investment in the community," says Kent Ledingham. "We intend to be here for a long time."
Included in the Ledingham makeover is a new logo carved in cement by Quebec-based sculptor Pierre St. Germain who is spending the summer in Winnipeg giving the Pointe West Auto Park in Headingley (as well as the Birchwood Auto Group's Honda and Saturn dealerships on Regent) a new, more rugged look.
While St. Germain creates the dealership signage and logos out of cement, he imbeds them in a cement backdrop he treats so that the back drops look like rocky outcrops shaped by natural erosion.
St. Germain has been working at his art since he was a teenager. For the past eight years, he has been crisscrossing Canada working on different commissions.
He notes that for auto dealerships, he has a policy in smaller cities of working for one dealership or dealership group only per community.
He originally approached the Birchwood Group late last fall. "We were interested," says Glen Hunter, "but we felt it would be better to wait until after the winter for Pierre to start work on this project."
St. Germain expects to have completed the logos and signage for all of the nine Birchwood dealerships as well as Orion Chev and Winnipeg Dodge Chrysler (the two Pointe West dealerships that are not owned by the Birchwood Group) by the end of August.
We also note the passing of two long time auto industry leaders.
While Louis Maric, the former president of Maric Mazda, passed away on July 1 at the age of 75 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease, Lorry Bendera's life was cut short by a heart attack at the age of 58 (he died on June 27) just five years after he retired from Focus Hyundai.
Bendera began working in the auto industry at Frontier Toyota in the 1970s.
That is where he first met the Carey Family with whom he later started Focus Hyundai (along with his brother, Bryan). Throughout the 1980s, he worked for the Ford Motor Company of Canada on the east coast.
He returned to Winnipeg in 1991 coinciding with the opening of Focus Hyundai. He retired in 2003.
"Lorry was enjoying his retirement," says Focus Hyundai dealer principal John Carey. "He was in the southern U.S. to buy a used motor home when he suffered his attack."
Louis Maric was a Croatian immigrant and a self-made man. Trained as a blacksmith and auto mechanic, he arrived in Winnipeg in 1955. He began work as a mechanic and rose through the ranks to become general manager and later owner of Cars International. In 1977, he opened Winnipeg's second Mazda dealership.
Gerry Gordon, the city's first Mazda dealer, describes Maric as an industry "icon" for many years.
He retired in 1990 but remained active in a lengthy list of community organizations until just a few months ago.
Our sympathy goes out to their families.
PREVIOUS
