Passing Rick Hendrick on the annual BNC 125 is proving as challenging as keeping up with Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon or other famous Hendrick Motorsports drivers on the NASCAR tracks.
The affiliated Hendrick Automotive Group dealership company again tops our annual list of the state’s largest private companies, which is based on revenue. Twenty-five companies turned over at least $1 billion last year, based on data shared by the organizations or research by BNC staffers. Among those leaving the list is Raleigh-based Leith Cars, where Hendrick started selling cars in the mid-1970s. New Jersey-based Holman bought the business from the Leith family in March.
The list includes North Carolina-based companies, which are mostly closely held or family-owned enterprises. A growing number are owned by private equity groups.
Newcomers this year include mobile-phone retailer Victra, engineering and design firm Kimley-Horn and National Power, which distributes generators and associated equipment.
Hendrick met with BNC at Charlotte’s NASCAR Hall of Fame, where his 40-year motorsports career is featured in a new exhibit. More than 100 employees attended an event honoring Hendrick, 75, and his wife, Linda. They’ve been married for 51 years. The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Are you pleased with how NASCAR is progressing?
You always think things could be better, but I feel like we’ve got a lot of good energy now. I think the future’s pretty strong. I feel better about NASCAR today than I did five or six or 10 years ago. I feel the electricity with the fans. And I think when you look at Amazon and people such as Netflix and those folks coming along, then that’s a great sign.
How has that happened?
I think there’s a lot of energy around the sport and sports in general. They see things like Kyle Larson running Indianapolis and the NASCAR race on the same day. And if you go up there and you see a sea of Larson fans at the race and then you look at how competitive it is. And then we ran over in Le Mans, France with our Garage 56 car. (It was the first NASCAR participation in the 24-hour race since 1976. )That blend of people who have never watched NASCAR races before are watching now. We’ve opened doors to a new generation of fans.
Why did you make the shift to defense work as a major part of Hendrick Motorsports?
When we quit building our chassis, we had a lot of people, really great folks, who were super-talented, then we found out that General Motors was going to build a military vehicle, the integrated surface vehicle. We said, `Let’s bid on that.’ In August, we’re getting ready to build our 1,000th unit here. And we’re expanding manufacturing. We have three or four items we’re doing for the Army. We are getting opportunities from a lot of different places to do prototyping and that’s because of our engineering talent and our ability to make anything, whether it’s carbon fiber or steel. And we have some of the best engineers in the world.
Couple that with GM, which has roughly 150 engineers right outside our gate. Put that many talented people together and there’s lots of opportunity.
How is your car business?
We’ve had some good years. COVID scared us to death, but we decided when COVID hit in March 2020 that we had to pay all of our people 80% of their wages rather than lay off anybody. I asked my CFO, “How long can we do this?” He said probably 90 days. But in 30 days, business opened back up a little, and we kept all of our people in place. Then we had a record year and three or four really unbelievable years.
I am super-excited that we are the largest privately held auto-dealership group in the country, and we’re expanding. We’ve got five new dealerships under construction. We’re not slowing down for the next 50 years in the automobile business and the next 40 years in racing. I won’t be here, but I’ve got really good people.
What’s your view of the EV transition?
I think that the government pushed too hard, too quickly. You have to build what the consumer wants. Everybody pushed hard that the EV was the way of the future. Now there’s so many rebates on EVs, and Tesla is cutting prices, so cars are stacking up. The combustion engine is here for a long time.
And really what we’ve got is the hybrid, which is a little bit of both, and that’s the best. I mean it gives you the ability to run on a battery then run on gas and recharge the battery. I think that’s the best of both worlds.
There’s definitely a market for EVs, but it’s around 8% or 9%, not 50%, in the next 10 years. That’s just not going to happen. We don’t have the infrastructure. I have a dealership in California, and we have rolling blackouts there. So if you shut down your business or your air conditioning at your house, why do you want to have everybody driving electric cars? The cars have to be charged. That makes no sense.
I think it is going to continue to evolve, but it’s not at the pace that the government wants to see it happen. We still don’t have the infrastructure for it.
Who has the best strategy among the automakers?
Ten years ago, I remember Toyota telling me that in 2023 or 2024, about 8% of the U.S. market would be EVs. That’s happened. And they said hybrid is the way to go, which is also true. All of the literature is giving Toyota credit for reading the tea leaves.
Everybody’s building hybrids now. At the BMW plant down in Spartanburg, on the same assembly line. They can build gas, hybrid or electric. They can switch and build what the customer wants. You can’t force it. I don’t care how much rebate and incentives you put on a car, people are not going to buy what they don’t want.
Will Hendrick Automotive remain private long term?
I do not want to be public, and I don’t want to sell it.Our numbers are as good or better than the public companies. The manufacturers like dealing with us, because we can make decisions without a board of directors, and we invest in our people in the franchise.
I’m not saying the public companies don’t. They are driven to make a profit and so am I. But they’re driven to create 20% growth, and they have to push to get there. I take care of my people first, and if you take care of the people, they’ll take care of you. We have less turnover. And when you rank us against the public companies with awards and everything else, we outperform them.
What would you tell other CEOs about creating a loyal staff?
I study companies that fail rather than companies that are successful. And so I watched Kodak. I watched a lot of different companies that have failed, and they resist change. If you take care of the people, they’ll look after the company. And if you can keep the people together working as a team, and if they know you’re going to look after ‘em with insurance, you have less turnover.
I look at some of the CEOs that come in from other businesses; they have no experience in the company they’re running. They’ve been handpicked by some board of directors to run a company they know nothing about. They don’t care as much about the people. I tell our people all the time that communication is key.
You’ve been a key part of building Charlotte. Why has it been a good place
for your business?
Actually I ran stores for someone else in Raleigh, then I moved to Bennettsville, South Carolina, to run a little broken dealership, because that’s the only way I could get in line for a Chevy store. GM promised me if I could fix it, they would give me a bigger opportunity. And then City Chevrolet [in Charlotte] came available. It was the primo deal in the state, and I took it, and we just exploded
And then racing was right here. I grew up on a farm when my dad raced, and I’d go on Saturday night with him. I used to drag race, and I knew people at GM through my dad that had racing parts. So when the teams around Charlotte that weren’t sponsored by GM would come to me, I’d help get ‘em parts.
One day I got a call from Max Muhleman, who was a Charlotte writer and [marketing company owner], and he said, ‘How would you like to be partners with Kenny Rogers and have Richard Petty drive the car?’ I thought, was this a trick question? And I knew Harry Hyde as the crew chief. So we put All Star Racing together. Then Petty backed out, the sponsor backed out and Kenny Rogers backed out. I got to Daytona with my bloomers around my ankles.
We’ve just had good luck and been blessed by our faith. I don’t know how it all happened. All I cared about was racing and automobiles. My dad and I built my first car when I was 14. I still have it. So I’m a car junkie, and I love racing. Outside of my family, the two things I enjoy are the automobile business and racing. I get to make a living doing the two things that I enjoy the most. ■
