Getting To Know Incoming NCDA Chairman Paul Dyke was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. As a child, his neighbor was big into the auto business, and Paul detailed cars for him. Paul became accustomed to being around cars and grew to love the industry. When Paul turned 18, he sold cars briefly, then opened up his own detail shop. But Paul wanted more. “Even as a young man, I had goals. I needed to figure out how to move out of Missouri. I wanted to end up in California,” Paul said. By the time he was 21, Paul was working as the used car manager at El Cajon Ford in El Cajon, California. He’s been there for 36 years and currently holds the title of president and dealer. El Cajon Ford has one location and recently added a Ford Pro Elite Service Center right down the street. The new service center has 30 bays and works on commercial trucks and fleets, which greatly benefits the local business community. Paul is just beginning his term as the 2025-2026 NCDA chairman. This is the second time he’s served as NCDA chairman; the first was in 2015-2016. We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Paul and learned more about his career, the industry and what he’d like to accomplish as chairman. The following are excerpts from our conversation. Have you had any mentors along the way, and what did they teach you? When I moved to California, my first boss was Art Dorin. He was interesting, strong and to the point, but fair. He had an old-school mindset and liked that I was committed to the business, working 29 days out of 30, 12 hours a day. Art is the one who brought me on at El Cajon Ford, where I met my other mentor, Paul Leader. His personality was similar to Art’s. He was grumpy and gruff, but he had a huge heart and was very loyal to his customers. Under their guidance, I learned how important it was to be loyal to your customers and employees. The number one lesson I learned was that when people screw up, move on. If they screw up too much, well, you’ve got to do something different, but usually they don’t screw up twice if you handle the matter right. Another lesson they taught me was to do things the right way the first time. Things are so much easier that way. What has been the most rewarding part of your career? Probably working with my employees, the customers and interacting with the community. We have almost an 80% repeat customer business, which is unheard of. And we’re now selling cars to second and third generation families, which is really cool. We have a very loyal customer base. I am also really proud of the tenure in my store. My sales department averages about 15 years of tenure. The service department’s average tenure is over 25 years. My problem is I have employees who should have retired five years ago, but they’re still hanging on. They have been here for 35-40 years and are incredible mentors to people coming up in the service department. It really works out well. They don’t have to do all the hard work. They make the younger employees pull the engines and transmissions, and then show them how to work. We build our team from within. It is important to us to support our community. We do a lot for local youth, donating to the Lakeside Boys and Girls Club and the Lakeside Optimist Club. We sponsor just about anything they ask us to do because the money goes right back into the community, where it is needed to help the well-deserving youth. Paul Dyke 8 SAN DIEGO DEALER
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