More than 25 years later, strong defender of dealers' rights fondly remembered

Firebrand. Outspoken.

An in-the-factory's-face dealer advocate.

Ron Tonkin, founder of Ron Tonkin Family of Dealerships in Portland, Ore., was all of that and then some, according to family members and dealers who knew him and Automotive News, which chronicled his year as president of NADA.

Tonkin took on the leadership mantle at NADA in January 1989. He promptly and publicly accused automakers of encroaching on dealers' businesses by unfairly allowing car rental and fleet companies to buy vehicles below the dealer wholesale price.

He ended his term in February 1990 with a lawsuit against the Big 3, Toyota and several rental-car companies over those subsidies. The suit was eventually settled out of court. Tonkin spent the months in between defending the dealer franchise system against automakers' use of retail rebates, customer satisfaction indexes and mandatory ad associations and fees. He charged factories with shoving unwanted inventory down dealers' throats and blamed them for dealers' dwindling profits.

Less than a month after taking office, Tonkin released a list of 205 dealers he said would back him in his factory relations counter-offensive. He called them his "Rough Riders."

Tonkin wasn't the first dealer to take on what he considered injustices leveled by manufacturers against dealers, recalls Edward Lapham, a former editor at Automotive News.

"But he was the one that got to be president of NADA and that's what gave him more leverage; he was able to give voice to some of the dealer concerns, like fleet subsidies, like retail rebates, like the ad associations," recalls Lapham, who retired from Automotive News in 2013.

Tonkin was 82 when he died in 2014. 

Today, sons Ed and Brad Tonkin are co-presidents of Ron Tonkin Family of Dealerships. The group ranks No. 93 on Automotive News' top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., with new retail sales of 10,958 units in 2015. In December 2016, Ron Tonkin Family of Dealerships agreed to sell 16 of its 21 dealerships to Gee Automotive Cos. of Spokane, Wash.

It's been more than a quarter of a century since Tonkin burst onto the scene, and he is still fondly remembered as a champion of dealers' rights. 

NADA, at a June 2016 board meeting in Aspen, Colo., presented a proclamation to Tonkin's family in his honor for extraordinary service to the industry and the positive impact he made on dealers' lives while he served. 

"My dad is probably the most remembered NADA president there was, and I'm not saying this; it comes from so many dealers I've met and seen over the years," said Ed Tonkin, who followed in his father's footsteps to chairman of NADA in 2010. NADA changed the title of the leadership position to chairman in 1998.

The Tonkins were only the second father-and-son duo to lead the dealership group, according to Ed Tonkin. "He didn't do what he did for self gain. He was so passionate about the dealer body and doing right by the dealers, and let's face it, he took it to the extreme," said Ed Tonkin. 

Ed Tonkin said he and his brother, Brad, who ran the family business while his father carried out his NADA presidential duties, encountered "some ill-will from the manufacturers." There was "woodshed taking and some fence mending" that went on, too, he said. 

"It wasn't easy for Brad and me in terms of business," said Ed Tonkin. "He said, "I make the messes and you clean them up.' But what the dealers loved him for is he would fall on his sword for the betterment of the dealer situation in this country." 

By the time Tonkin took over the reins of NADA in January 1989, he had been an NADA director since 1983. He was an early megadealer, a term used then for private owners of multiple dealerships and franchises, said Lapham. 

Tonkin's dealerships sold Chevro-let, Honda, Lotus, Toyota, Dodge, Bertone, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Acura, Yugo, Suzuki, Zimmer and Sterling, according to a Jan. 23, 1989, Automotive News article.

Doug Knust, president of Harry K Chevrolet-Buick, in Oacoma, S.D., and of Harry K Ford-Lincoln in Winner, S.D., had been in the retail auto business with his father only "two or three" years when he was introduced to Tonkin and NADA in the pages of Automotive News.

Knust admired Tonkin because he was an advocate for all dealers, no matter their size or location. He met Tonkin in person a year or two after joining NADA's board of directors in 2007 as its South Dakota representative. 

Inspired by Tonkin, Knust became an advocate for small and rural dealers at NADA gatherings and other meetings. 

"I think small dealers tend to be under-represented on boards whether it's the NADA board or dealer councils -- and here's a guy who wasn't a small dealer but empathized with many of the issues we had to deal with," said Knust. "Oftentimes, [the issues] are similar to the issues the big dealers have to deal with."

During his presidency, Tonkin advised dealers to reduce their new-vehicle inventory to a 15- to 30-day supply, a controversial business position with far-reaching legal ramifications.

Such skimpy inventory was impractical and dangerous for dealers who generated most of their sales from their on-hand stock, as a Nov. 6, 1989, Auto-motive News article pointed out. More important, it drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, which in 1994 began a 16-month probe into alleged antitrust activities at NADA dating back to Tonkin's letter.

In 1995, NADA agreed to a settlement. It admitted no wrongdoing but promised not to engage in antitrust activities and agreed to 10 years of Justice Department monitoring.

H. Carter Myers III, a Virginia dealer who took over as chairman of NADA in 2002, donated $100 to Tonkin's cause in 1989, which made him a Rough Rider. He strongly believed in the franchise system then and still does.

"We work harder for customers than any other system out there," Myers said. "It's got to be respected by the manufacturer. It needs to be a two-way street.

"Ron Tonkin spoke up for those kinds of principles."