How an oddball Chevy transformed a Houston dealership - Automotive News (subscription) (blog)
Paul Peebles has managed to make a thriving business out of it. Peebles, owner and president of North Freeway Hyundai in Spring, Texas, is the undisputed (if unlikely) king of SSR sales. During the last five years, Peebles says, his used-car team has brokered 447 SSR transactions involving 402 different SSRs. At one point, Peebles had 32 in stock, and he claims that for a few years, at any given time, at least one-third of all SSRs for sale on eBay Motors were vehicles in his inventory. The SSR also has fueled a robust trade-in operation that has kept Peebles' used-car gallery stocked with exotic and vintage vehicles, adding pizazz to a store whose bread-and-butter business is selling sensible Korean sedans and crossovers. It all started in earnest in 2010, when Peebles "wanted to branch out and expand our used-car business, but not cannibalize our Hyundai business," he recalls. As an experiment, North Freeway acquired five eye-catching used vehicles: a Dodge Viper, a Plymouth Prowler, a Pontiac GTO, a Ford Thunderbird and an SSR. That first SSR was tough to come by. Because SSRs are rare and not often sold at auction, Peebles says, he had to call dozens of owners to persuade them to part with their vehicles. "Instead of doing the smart thing and saying, 'No, I've already got one,' I went ahead and bought the other four," he says. Source: www.autonews.com
