By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Timing's everything.
Even new Dowagiac Auto Sales partners Greg Ferrier and Jim Allen wouldn't dispute that, and they've had their share of disagreements.
The longtime colleagues at Haggin-Wimberley or, more recently, C. Wimberley, decided the time had come in their rapidly changing business to strike out on their own.
Dowagiac Auto Sales opened Aug. 15 on M-51, about a mile south of town.
Allen, a Battle Creek native who's lived in Dowagiac the past eight years, had been with Wimberley since 1983, from Kalamazoo to Florida to Dowagiac, where the lifelong "Ford guy" found himself at the dealership's Chevy store.
Allen laughs recalling how he and Ferrier "hated each other for the first five or six years. We really did. We did not get along. We did not agree and we fought and yelled at each other. He and I probably had more verbal confrontations than we have with our spouses over 30 years. We've gotten along great for 10 years."
With Wimberley's acquisition of Ford stores in Sturgis and Three Rivers, Allen found himself tiring of the commute to St. Joseph County.
Ferrier, a school board member, bulldogged the licensing process through three trips to Lansing to stick to their timetable of being up and running in 60 days.
In response, Dowagiac Auto Sales' niche is its "buy here pay here" deals starting at 4.5-percent interest. "We guarantee financing," Allen said. "Everybody can get a car."
They expect about half of their business to be drawn from Dowagiac, with other customers coming from Edwardsburg, Benton Harbor, Decatur, Berrien Springs and Berrien Center.
In addition to used vehicles on their former Diamond lot, "We can still do new cars. We've got relationships with other dealers."
Besides the two partners, Dowagiac Auto Sales employs four - two salesmen, a mechanic and a cleaning person.