A Marriage Of Convience... King Kar...

The old expression that goes "if you don't hear a good rumour by 8:00 am then you should start one" certainly found it's home here on PEI and I couldn't help but chuckle yesterday when I was flipping through a popular Island blog www.peiinfo.com and came across this topic What's the name of that new auto shop in the Industrial Park and if you follow this link you can follow the responses http://www.peiinfo.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22809 ....and as with any rumour some of it's usually true.... but here's the "Skinny" on KingKar... a number of years ago I heard a successful business person speaking on "turning your passion into a business" and I couldn't help but think that could be fun... and as most of my friends know my passion is "speed and fast cars" and for many years my hotmail address continues to be timsfastcar@hotmail.com ...so a couple of years ago I convinced myself that this business concept may work and at the very least it would be "fun"... so I came up with this "hair brain idea" that I could buy and sell used Porsches all over North America from PEI (and I am)... and it wasn't long afterwards when my youngest boy "Puddy" (who has never shown an interest in business) arrived home from being away at school and upon seeing the yard and garage full of cars sarcastically said, "Dad, you must have been really thinking hard to come up with selling Porsches on PEI".... even the Princess scoffs at the concept and still thinks I'm crazy, which by the way might help them get me institutionalized sometime soon... so to legitimize the business I went about all the proper paperwork and got a "used car license" for Seawin Auto Sales.... which required me to have a location and a service shop for the class of license I had and since we already had a service shop at Home Hardware Auto it was approved... but when we moved our offices out of the Home Hardware to West Royalty then my dealers license had to move with it as the rules require a physical location with an office and we also needed a new service shop... at about the same time a tenant who had been in one of our buildings at 22 Fourth Street moved out so I now had a building to run the used car business out of but didn't have a proper shop... Scott McDonald who had managed our shop at Home Hardware was thinking of opening his own shop but didn’t have all the “coin” to do so... So Scott and I got talking one day and since he had worked on a lot of my Porsches in the past with great success one thing led to another... and presto out of the blue we had the makings of a full service centre specializing in imported cars and here's how the "marriage of convenience" works... although the legal title to the business does show up in my name (this serves my needs to meet the rules of my dealer’s license) Scott has some ownership now together with a binding agreement to assume “full ownership” of the "operating business" at 22 Fourth Street as the business moves forward... so the "operations" part of the business is really his which I help finance but I retain ownership in the building which is what I normally do... I get a preferred rate for my "used car" business and I get one of the best mechanics in the business looking after my cars... I don’t get any preferred service times as Scott has to make money first to make the business work and help pay the rent... he hires his people, he collects the money and pays the bills (he's the BOSS) and I stay away from the operating business... King Kar has all the "newest" top of the line equipment to service any passenger vehicle but the real forte of the business is lubes, alignments, tires, brakes and tuning for high end imported vehicles... now back to the question of the Porsche business... am I making money... "NO"... am I having fun "YES"... but I will eventually figure out how to make money at it... and in the meantime I hope I helped those curious Islanders figure out what’s going on in the “rumour” department... but if you're looking to buy a Porsche give me a call...