New owners at Naylor

continued

be treated well and have a nice place?’

“Most domestic dealers don’t get that. They figure if they own a halfway decent place and give [customers] at least a flat-screen TV to look at, they’ll be fine. That’s not true. They want that extra red-carpet treatment, so they know we appreciate their business.” Gilmour knew how to provide that, because he used to manage luxury import dealerships.

His vision dovetails nicely with his partner’s. Benn Gilmore was an ear, nose, and throat surgeon for more than two decades before he retired last December. “My plan was to do full-time Christian medical missions,” he says. But he discovered that an enormous amount of infrastructure would have been required to support the monthly missions he'd hoped for--"too much to ask of the places I targeted."

He found a new direction when he went to buy a car from Gilmour last winter. They had known each other casually for five years, and Gilmore asked his friend what his long-range goal was. “He said, ‘To have one hundred dealerships and change lives,’” Gilmore recalls. “I thought, ‘Christian missionary work is changing lives. Maybe we can collaborate here.’”