Rod Parr displays the Golden Shovel Award

Generally when you hear the punch line “location, location, location” it has to do with the three most important criteria for choosing residential real estate.

What Rod Parr, owner of Bremerton’s Parr Ford-Parr Mazda and Parr Imports, discovered is that the same issues concerning quality of location held true for his business as well.

Since moving his Parr Ford and Parr Mazda dealership to its new 11-acre location immediately adjacent to Highway 3, the 55-year old business owner discovered that drive-by visibility was going to be key to his new business expansions' success. Parr estimates that 68,000 drivers whiz past his dealership each day and with 1,600 feet of freeway exposure, that’s a lot of folks who have a bird’s eye view of exactly what’s on his lot on any given day.

“We’ve had people actually come into the dealership and say that they want to look at a particular truck that they can see from the freeway,” Parr marvels. “In fact, we saw more new customers in the first two months at our new location than we did in perhaps the last six months at our old location.”

Parr also credits the addition of an electronic reader board – lit, billboard-like signage located alongside the highway – with drawing additional attention to what the dealership has to offer. Does increased visibility mean an increase in perceived business viability to retail customers?

Perhaps, admits Parr, but he tempers that concept with the insistence that without the basic business principal of customer service, the increased visibility wouldn’t mean much.

“Let’s face it,” says Parr, “our business is a people business. If we don’t treat people the right way in their auto sales or their auto service, they won’t come back and they won’t refer people to us. This is a competitive business and we take our customers very seriously. Without them, it wouldn’t matter where we were located.”

Parr recently held a grand opening at the dealership for both clients and the community in general. The event was a virtual “Who’s Who” of Kitsap County, with prominent business people, politicians and the press all in attendance.

At the event, Parr was presented with the “Golden Shovel Award” by a representative of Ford Motor Company for his leadership in constructing what is an absolute state-of-the-art facility.

Parr’s had plenty of opportunity to fine-tune his customer service and auto dealership skills; he’s been in the business in one form or another for more than thirty-five years.

While attending junior college, he worked part-time at a Kent dealership delivering parts. With a love of cars, Parr completed his college degree in marketing at San Jose State College with an eye to eventually working for the Ford Motor Corporation. When his former supervisor at the dealership suggested that he try his hand working at the local dealership level for a year or two, Parr was skeptical at first that it was the right career move.

“I decided to give it a shot,” Parr smiles, “and became the dealership’s service manager. A couple years later at Korum Ford, I became sales manager and later, general manager. It wound up being a smart career move…I love the retail dealership end of this business and the dream of owning my own dealership seemed suddenly reasonable.”

Parr wound up with not one but two dealerships, both based in Bremerton. He purchased Bennett Ford in 1983, changing the name a year later, and purchased Peninsula Volkswagen in 1988 with a name change to Parr Imports.

Between the two dealership locations, the nearly one hundred and fifty people employed by Parr sell and service five automobile brand names – Ford, Mazda, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Isuzu – and the market, says Parr, has never been better.

The slowdown in the general economy, says Parr, has meant a surprisingly good opportunity for car buyers. Spurred on in part by the threat of economic recession and part by the increased concerns over the economy following the September 11 attacks, two of the major automakers – General Motors and Ford – encouraged consumers and business owners to buy vehicles by offering zero percent financing.

That in turn spurred mimic offers by other domestic and import automakers, resulting in no-interest or low-interest financing offers that haven’t been seen in decades. The savings in interest, says Parr, wasn’t lost on either local consumers or local business owners with fleet or vehicle needs.

“We suddenly saw something new,” says Parr, “and that was the person coming onto the lot with a high-interest loan on a year-old vehicle saying that they wanted to do a trade-in for a new, interest-free car loan. It not only meant lots of new car sales but also an incredible inventory of used cars, the kinds of used cars that used to be really hard to find.”

It also made an impact on the “car lease versus car purchase” dilemma faced by business owners and consumers alike. “We definitely saw a decrease in leases,” says Parr, “and rightly so. Consumers and business people could now purchase a vehicle and have equity in their purchase rather than opt for a lease because of other factors.”

Parr expects that automakers will continue the deals through March or April, citing Ford’s zero percent offer and Volkswagen’s 2.9 percent interest offer as examples of what those looking to purchase a new personal car or a company vehicle can expect. That may mean a nice buying opportunity for Kitsap-based businesses and residents but Parr is quick to point out that, in his experience, Kitsap County was riding out the economic slowdown better than other western Washington communities anyway.

“Yes, we saw a bit of a slowdown when there were cutbacks at the Navy (installations) but not the downturn that we were seeing elsewhere in the region. We’re not necessarily a high, high-income community but we’re fairly stable and perhaps not as prone to the severe ups and downs,” said Parr.