Pub. 3 Issue 4

14 www.glancda.org T he nomination of John Symes, president of Toyota Pasadena in Pasadena, California, for the 2016 TIME Dealer of the Year award was announced today by TIME. Symes is one of a select group of 50 dealer nominees from across the country who will be honored at the 99th annual National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention & Exposition in Las Vegas, Ne- vada, onApril 1, 2016. The announcement of this year’s nominees was made by Meredith Long, publisher, TIME, and Tim Russi, president of Auto Finance for Ally Financial. “The TIME Dealer of the Year award nominees are business leaders and pillars of their communities, who have each given generously to support important charitable causes,” said Russi. “Ally is proud to honor these dealers and to recognize their commit- ment to making a difference.” In its fifth year as exclusive sponsor, Ally will recognize dealer nominees and their community efforts by contributing $1,000 to each nominee’s 501(c)3 charity of choice. Nominees will also be recognized on Al- lyDealerHeroes.com, which highlights the philanthropic contributions and achieve- ments of TIMEDealer of the Year nominees. The TIME Dealer of the Year award is one of the automobile industry’s most prestigious and highly coveted honors. Recipients are among the nation’s most successful auto dealers who also demonstrate a long-standing commitment to community service. Symes, 65, was chosen to represent the California New Car Dealers Association and Greater Los Angeles New Car Dealers Association in the national competition – one of only 50 auto dealers from16,000 nationwide – nomi- nated for the 47th annual award. The award is sponsored by TIME in association with Ally Financial, and in cooperation with NADA. A panel of faculty members from the Tauber Institute for Global Operations at the Uni- versity of Michigan will select one finalist from each of the four NADA regions and one national Dealer of the Year. “Our dealership has been family-owned and operated for more than 68 years and we have tried to create a feeling of family within the dealership,” nominee Symes said. “As dealer principal, I am available on a daily basis to greet and encourage both employees and customers.” Symes, a 1968 graduate of Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California, earned a B.A. in social science from the University of Oregon in Eugene in 1973, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Symes went to work in his family’s dealership, fol- lowing in the footsteps of his grandfather, who opened a Cadillac store in Pasadena in 1948, and his father, who succeeded his grandfather as dealer in 1963. “In 1965, at the age of 15, I started washing cars and working pick-up and delivery dur- ing school vacations,” Symes remembers. “I would attach the Cadillacs to a Volkswagen Beetle and deliver them to the customers.” After college, he worked fulltime at the dealership, moving from department to de- partment, before rising to general manager in 1980. Today, he’s president of the Symes John Symes Nominated for Dealer of the Year TIME AND ALLY FINANCIAL HONOR PASADENA DEALER