The name BILL WINK has been synonymous with automotive excellence around the Motor City for more than 60 years. In fact, the current owner of the Chevrolet dealership in Dearborn, Mich., is the third-generation Bill Wink to carry on the family's proud tradition.
"My grandfather started the dealership in 1931, during the Depression, for about $3,500," Wink says. "He capitalized the place and started doing business as Bill Wink Chevrolet
In 1990, after spending virtually his entire life in and around the building, Bill took over the operation of Bill Wink Chevrolet full time. "My father had retired, we had a general manager retire, and the business climate wasn't that great," he recalls.
It had been. In the early 1980s, while Bill was manager of the company's fleet department, Bill Wink Chevrolet enjoyed the lofty distinction of reigning as the #1 selling Chevy dealership in America for several years in a row, due in part to its fleet sales.
"We sold one account over 20,000 units (vehicles) a year," Wink relates. "We'd drop ship them all across the country to different Chevrolet dealers, and it was a fun business. Then we'd go to Chicago and get our awards every year."
Running a prosperous Chevrolet operation in the shadow of Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn has its own weighty challenges, but the drive to succeed at Bill Wink Chevrolet is made even more intense by a desire to keep the family business thriving.
"You've taken over from two successful people, you're handed the ball, so there's that pressure to do well," Bill says. "And we've been fortunate enough that we have done a good job since everybody retired and kind of left me out here alone. So it's been gratifying in that way."
Indeed, Wink says the whole process of managing a multimillion-dollar auto sales complex is gratifying to him. "I think the people are the biggest reason," he explains. "It's a retail environment, obviously, and you just meet so many different types of people every day on the job, it's been really fun for me doing that.
"And I have a total open-door policy. I'm always here, I'm here every day, eight hours a day, and the door's open. The customers know that, and if they want to come in and talk to me about something, they do."
It's so much more than simply selling cars. "Because a dealership is a new car department, used car department, the service end, body shop, a finance department and parts, it's six different little businesses under one roof," says Wink. "And all six of them have to be entities unto themselves to make money, and yet they all have to interrelate. And you want the overall philosophy of the company to go down to all those departments. So I think they're all very important parts of the integrity of the whole dealership."
And there isn't a facet of the organization with which Wink isn't intimately familiar, having worked at Bill Wink Chevrolet since he was a child. "Yeah, I was always involved in it," says Bill. "You know, on Saturdays I'd come down with my Dad, while he was doing stuff he'd put me to work like brushing off parts, sweeping floors, that kind of stuff.
"And when I was old enough to get down here by myself, I became a car jockey, washing cars and changing tires. Then I graduated to a bodies helper, learning how to do body work and paint work in the paint department. Then over to the mechanical side, on the lube rack doing lube, oil and filters and light-duty mechanical work. That was about the time one of our employees, a guy named Herb Brown, taught me how to build small block Chevys (engies), and I just kind of graduated from there. Basically, I worked in every department in the dealership in one capacity or another."
The department he remained in the longest, and liked the best, was sales. "When I got out of the service I came back to work here selling cars, and just really enjoyed it," he says. "The amount of money you make just equates to how hard you want to work. And as a salesperson, you've got your own business. I mean, your tool is a pen,and that's it. So I stayed in that job quite a while."
