Women auto dealers: female owners sparkle like new cars

Ebony, April, 1997 by Muriel L. Whetstone Sims

Driven to succeed, confident of their strengths, determined to reach their goals and focused on the prize, Black women auto dealers are sparkling like new cars in the nation's showrooms.

Although the estimated eight Black women owner-managers are only a handful of the thousands of American auto dealers, they have established a beachhead in the industry, and their numbers are growing.

Black and female in a predominantly White and predominantly male industry, they have proven that they can move inventory with the best of them.

Most of the seven women featured on the following pages obtained their businesses after submitting to rigorous training in corporate dealership programs. The typical program combines one to two years of classroom and on-the-job training before candidates are given the option to purchase dealerships.

One of the pioneer women auto dealers was Jacqueline L. Edgar, who purchased a Chevrolet dealership in 1983. Although it is easier today to buy into dealerships, there are still obstacles. Eight years ago, when Shirley L. Gross-Moore took over Barrington Dodge in Barrington, Ill., even her friends and relatives doubted that she could succeed. But in the end, the first Black chairperson--male or female--of the Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce is having the last laugh. "They tell me," she says, "they had bets on me when I moved here that I wouldn't last six months because I am a Black female in an all-White community....That makes it really gratifying that I have been able to make it happen."

With $27 million in sales of new and used Dodge cars, trucks and vans, Shirley L. Gross-Moore, owner of Barrington Dodge in Barrington, Ill., posted the highest gross 1996 profits of the seven women featured. Gross-Moore, a widow without children, attended Wayne State University and obtained her master's degree in business from Central Michigan State. A former public affairs director for a Detroit TV station, she was recruited into the Chrysler dealer development program in 1986 and began operating the Barrington dealership in December 1988. She spent several of the last eight years trying not to lose more money than she'd lost the year before. And it didn't help matters that some people questioned her ability to turn a profit. But Gross-Moore turned doubters into customers and became one of the most honored businesspersons in the area.

"Miss Jackie"--as she's affectionately called by her staff and loyal customers around Breaux Bridge, La.,--is the owner of both Jackie Edgar Ford and the Jackie Edgar RV Center in Lafayette, La. The pioneering woman auto dealer bought her first facility in 1983. She sold it and purchased the Ford dealership in 1985.

Jacqueline L. Edgar ventured into the automobile industry in 1974 when she left her job as a grocery store cashier and began selling cars to support her young family. Now, nearly 25 years later, the divorced mother of two, Rachel, 26, and Allen (Frosty), 15, heads businesses that grossed nearly $19 million in 1996.

"I worked. I worked, baby," says the gregarious dealer. "I was a single parent raising my kids, and I worked those long hours, you know. There were a lot of things I didn't know because I went from a salesperson to a dealer. Normally, you're a manager and then you become a dealer....I had to learn the best way I knew how, and I did it."

Peggy Cockerham, owner of Southlake Buick Volvo Subaru in Morrow, Ga., is in her fifth year of selling new and used cars. She manages a staff of 50 to 55 employees and reported 1996 gross sales of Approximately $25 million.

Cockerham attended Greensboro College and received her MBA in finance from Clark-Atlanta University. Before becoming a General Motors dealer in 1992, she worked seven years as a commercial banker and lender in Charlotte, N.C. Her husband, John Ali, whom she married in July, helps her to run the dealership. She has two stepchildren, Pam, 18, and Anwar, 15.

Cockerham is the only Black woman auto dealer operating two foreign franchises, and she thinks there's a need for more African-American import dealers.

Ellenae Hart-Fairhurst (left) began working at Ford Motor Company in 1968 as part of its marketing research staff. Twenty years later, she opened her first Chrysler dealership in Fayetteville, N.C. After selling her interest in that store, she purchased Huntsville Dodge in Huntsville, Ala., in May 1992. Hart-Fairhurst manages a 42-member staff which produced $25 million in gross sales in 1996.

Fairly well-accepted as a woman operating in a man's world, she says, she does sometimes encounter resistance as an African-American. "It's the subtle kinds of things that you can't put your finger on, the obstacles and the underground word-of-mouth," she explains, "which you can only try to overcome by doing everything correctly."

Saundra K. Grimes (right) is the owner of Freeport Ford Lincoln Mercury, which she began operating in 1991. In 1996, the Freeport, Ill., dealership reported gross sales of more than $15 million.