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In the field of car sales, family-owned dealerships are a fairly common occurrence. Doing business with family, however, can always be a tricky affair, especially if the ground rules aren’t firmly established from the beginning.

The Neil Huffman Auto Group, a six-roof (soon to be eight-roof) dealer group headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, is no exception. Established in 1969 with a Volkswagen dealership, the family knew it had to make some hard decisions when founder Neil passed away in 2007. One way would have been to split the business up into separate dealerships. Instead, after some planning — and after ground rules were laid down — two of Huffman’s children, Kim and Dow Huffman, and Neil’s grandson, Shane Huffman, decided to keep the business together and in the family by becoming co-owners of the group.

So far, it seems to have been the right move. The business, which sells Volkswagen, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Honda and Acura vehicles, is getting ready to expand. Construction on a new 10,935 square-foot Subaru superstore has just been completed as part of a multi-phase project to expand the group for new generations of the family.

We recently sat down with Kim, Dow and Shane to ask them what it was like growing up in the car business, how they decided to go forward with the company, how they keep it running smoothly and where they see it going in the future.

autosuccess: what are your first memories of the dealership?shane: One of our service advisors, who’s still working here, would hang me by my ankles off the balcony of the Volkswagen store.

as: growing up, what did you think of the dealership?kim: I was proud of the fact that my parents created something, they were working at it and that they made it theirs. I was very proud of them, and I was very respectful of everything they gave us, because I knew what they had to give up to give to us. I never took it for granted.

as: when did you decide you wanted to be a part of the dealership?shane: As a kid, my mom would drop me off at the Nissan store, and I’d wash cars on the weekends and through high school. That was

family-owned neil huffman auto group continues traditions while confidently stepping into the future

my job. From there, I went into parts delivery and the service department. When I came home from college, I went into sales.

kim: I didn’t know I was going to. My father didn’t want me to go in this direction. He said you had to put in very hard hours. He didn’t know if it was an area for a woman to go into, but he knew that I liked to work. I started working at the dealership, in the office, when I was 15 or 16. When I went to college, I had a lot of part time jobs. I went on to get a degree in marketing, and got a job in advertising. Dad thought, “She’s safe — she’s not going to go in this direction.” My mom, though, said, “You need to bring her back in.” So, Dad asked if I’d come back and work in the marketing area of the business, and that’s where I started.

as: kim, describe what happened at the dealership after neil passed away.kim: I had worked at the dealership until I was about 32 years old, and then I “retired” when my kids got a little older. A few years later, my father passed away. When he made me the trustee of the estate, I asked what that included. He said “Let me send you to the attorney, and they’ll give you the information.” I went down and talked to the attorneys. They introduced me to the trust department and gave me a class about being a trustee. Dad then made me the successor for the Nissan store, and the lawyers told me more. I asked him “what do I do?” and he said “Don’t worry about it — the managers are all here; this is what you have to do.” We went through the information and I thought, “OK, I’m qualified.”

And then he passed away, and that’s when I knew that I really didn’t know what I was doing. Fortunately, Dow stepped in and said “I’m going to send you to the NADA school.” It’s a year-long program, with trips to Virginia for a week here and there, and it teaches you everything you need to know about every department in running a dealership. After going through that, I knew I could do it. I was the oldest person in the class, and one of only four females. It was the scariest thing I had ever done. Fortunately, they walked me through the entire process, and I came out with one of the highest grades. I knew I could do it, then. I’m sending my son there right now, and periodically I send different managers to different classes.

as: shane, you moved into your grandfather’s office after he passed away. shane: My office was across the hall from his, and he was still coming in once a week. When he died, a short time later I started moving my office into his, but I didn’t really want to change anything. It’s still got his old notes, and pens and rubber bands that have turned old and are falling apart. It didn’t seem right to change it, so, with the exception of a drawer and a file cabinet, I just left everything the way it was.

as: describe the family dynamics in your business.shane: We’re on the same page as far as wanting to grow the business and the family name. Where we used to not talk as much to each other; now, we communicate almost every day, so it’s actually brought us closer together.

dow: The family dynamics do change a little. Shane and myself have worked together for several years very successfully. With Kim, now, it rejuvenates me because I get to watch her blossom into a wonderful “car guy.”  

as: what are some of the advantages of working with family?shane: We’ve got two other people to bounce ideas off of and talk through business scenarios and planning. You’re not in it alone. You’ve got your partners, and you can trust them because they’re your family. They’re looking out for your best interests.

as: and what are some of the disadvantages of working with family?kim: The disadvantage in the past would have been one person thinking they had a little more knowledge, power or entitlement, which is why we brought in an outside company to help us put together this management partnership.

Dow HuffmanShaneHuffmanKim Huffman

leadership solution

generational drive:

family-owned neil huffman auto group continues traditions while confidently stepping into the future

as: when you decided to come together and keep the auto group one entity, what went into that decision?kim: In my mind, it’s been four years in the making of how I wanted to do it. Because I knew I didn’t have the ability to put this together, we reached out to a professional company to put a legal corporation together. I knew what I wanted and what I did not want. We needed everything to be set where we were starting out equals, so that there wasn’t any entitlement. When we started out four or five years ago, I didn’t care, because in my mind, I was learning everything. Whichever family member was in place had the right, because they were already there. We’re at this point right now, however, where we’re all equal. We’re going forward, and we’re all equal. There’s no disadvantage anymore.

as: how do you handle the inevitable disagreements?shane: We disagree through them. Each person may have their sticky point, so you know it’s coming. You know where each person’s going to be, so you talk through it and you have respect for one another’s opinion. You’re not going to win every disagreement. Everyone wins some, and you just go on with it. We communicate well, and that’s important. We give everyone a chance to talk about it. You wind up finding out that you’ve come to an agreement and didn’t even realize it. You’ve just talked your way into it.

dow: Handling disagreements is still work for me. Since Dad’s passing, I really haven’t had too many to deal with, but when they occur, I do have to bite my lip on occasion. Let’s just say, I’m a work in progress.

as: what is your training philosophy?kim: When I got involved and came back from NADA School, I figured the best way to give customers what they needed was to have employees who knew what they needed. For instance,

in fixed-ops, I went back and made sure all of technicians had the most training they could get. I made my service advisors and all of my technicians get what they could get. Nissan provides a lot of training online. I made sure everyone was certified to their standards. We send a lot of our technicians to Nissan training — we pay their way, and it can be expensive. I also send my service manager to training. I started doing that three years ago — it was necessary. If you don’t train them, you’re not giving your customer the best.

as: how do family values translate to business values?dow: Family values are our business values. Always. There isn’t a day when I don’t approach a situation thinking, “Is it the right thing to do?” and “How would Dad handled this?” Family values are everything. Period.

generational drive:shane: The biggest thing is taking care of the customer. That is what’s been pushed into my head the most. You’ve got to take care of the customer, because it’s not about the first car you sell them, or the first time you service them. It’s about the second time and getting them to come back and do business with you. If you don’t take care of their problem quickly, when they arise, they’re not going to come back and do business with you. If you don’t have them coming back to do business with you, you’re not going to be in business very long.

as: with the next generation starting to work at the dealership, what do you want for the future?kim: When we put the legal corporation together, we knew that we needed it to be fair, and we knew that we needed it to be long-lasting, so that the third and fourth generation could at it and say “this is equal; this is fair.” We needed to have the structure for our generation to be the same for the next generation and the next.

shane: You bring young people up and they’ve got new ideas and different technologies, views and thoughts. You see them add more resources to the table to strengthen the dealership into the future.

Neil Huffman’s office has been kept largely as it was by his grandson, Shane, who now uses it. The family has continued Neil’s legacy by not only keeping the company together, but expanding it with the new 10,935 square foot Subaru Superstore.

From thePast to

the Future: