Paul Holloway, a New Hampshire dealer and past president of the National Automobile Dealers Association, died Tuesday. He was 84.
Holloway bought his first dealership, Holloway Buick-Pontiac, in Exeter, N.H., in 1967. Before he started selling off stores around 2000, his Holloway Automotive Group grew to 13 locations selling BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Fiat, Mazda, Cadillac, Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet and GMC. He was most recently owner of Holloway Buick-GMC-Cadillac in Portsmouth, N.H. Before becoming a dealer, Holloway was a district manager for Buick.
His son Paul Scott Holloway, now dealer principal of Holloway Buick-GMC-Cadillac, told Automotive News his father’s philosophy on running a dealership was: “Treat your employees like family, and leave the world a better place than you found it.”
Active in politics, Holloway told Automotive News in January 1998: “Every president since Jimmy Carter has come by my dealership to shake hands.”
He said back then that his New Hampshire residency helped him push his dealer-related political agenda.
“Being from New Hampshire helped a lot in the case of the luxury tax repeal,” Holloway said in 1998. “They said it couldn’t get done. But about a dozen people hung in together on this and made it work.”
He also credited his New Hampshire connection as integral to his role in having Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, speak at the NADA Washington conference.
Holloway’s key passion was education, and he said he wanted to be remembered as NADA’s “education president.” He recognized the importance of using technology to educate dealers and their employees and identified one of the industry’s ongoing problems as “attracting good, qualified employees.”
“We really have to do a better job of educating and providing more opportunities for training. We need to see outside the box how we’re going to get more information quickly to our dealer body and be of better service to them,” he said in 1998.
Holloway graduated in 1961 from the Temple University School of Business. He attended college on a football scholarship and was drafted by teams in the American Football League and National Football League.
He never looked back on his decision to pursue business instead of professional sports.
“It was important for me to get my degree and get started on a career. I was never sorry,” he said.
Holloway is survived by his wife of 62 years, Anna Grace Baer; their two children, Debra Linn Holloway (Scott F. Marion) and Paul Scott Holloway (Robin GB Holloway), grandchildren Paul A. Holloway, Elizabeth G. Holloway and Anna Rose Marion; and extended grandchildren Emma Marion and Noah Marion.
