Joe Holland Chevrolet and Imports salutes the life of Senator Robert C. Byrd. Senator Byrd served the state of West Virginia for 57 years with honor and integrity. Every West Virginian can recognize the Senator’s commitment to making West Virginia a better place.

He will be remembered as an icon of West Virginia history and will truly be missed. Our condolences are with the family of Senator Byrd. To learn more about the Senator’s arrangements and his accomplishments we invite you to visit: http://byrd.senate.gov

The popularity of the new 2010 Equinox is amazing. We received 4 last week and sold out right away. Chevrolet quality, styling, and price have been way ahead of the market on a every new vehicle released in the last couple of years. From the redesigned 2006 Malibu through the 2010 Camaro and Equinox, Chevrolet has been ahead of the competition. Check out the new 2010 Equinox and you’ll see the success of Chevrolet.

Our Hyundai manager, Tom Knight was out taking pictures over the weekend. Check out the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/tommyknightjr/WineCellarPark#5394123870188379250. Very nice shots.

Check out the new car lineup coming to Chevrolet. With the reorganization of GM, Chevrolet will become the cornerstone of future success. And Chevrolet is coming out with some great new vehicles in the coming year. First coming up is a European model, The Cruze. Click here for a youtube video.Chevy’s coming on strong. We’ll write more on the Cruze later. And look for info on the electric Volt next. And for real fun, do a google search on the Chevy Spark, and email us what you think to info@joeholland.com.-Chevy Proud

General Motors Co. is looking at assembling the Chevrolet Equinox crossover at a second plant.“We are studying how fast we can add another plant for the Equinox,” Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman in charge of marketing, said at a media event today. “For the time being, we’re just doing a third shift at the CAMI plant.”

GM assembles the Equinox and the newly launched 2010 GMC Terrain at a plant in Ontario, CAMI Automotive Inc., which GM operates in a joint venture with Suzuki Motor Corp.

The company launched the redesigned Equinox in June.

GM says retail sales of the 2010 Equinox totaled 9,902 through Sept. 15.

The third shift at CAMI starts in mid- to late October. That will boost annual production capacity of the Equinox and Terrain to nearly 200,000 vehicles. GM launched the Terrain in late August.

Lutz expects high-volume sales for both vehicles. He declined to be specific.

GM expects the Equinox’s segment to grow from the current 2 million per year to 2.3 million in the next two to three years, says Hugh Milne, GMC marketing manager.

In the latter part of 2008, Joe Holland was approached by a couple brothers, about possibly participating in local car Cruise-Ins. Joe Holland Chevrolet and Imports, always looking for new and effective ways to advertise as well as build community awareness, eagerly teamed up with Quaker Steak and Lube along with the Frame brothers in becoming a sponsor of the Cruise-Ins.If you stop by Quaker Steak and Lube, you will see that throughout the year, we place vehicles outside the restaurant. This way their customers can look at the vehicles at their own leisure, and we expand our visibility at the same time. Here at the dealership, we are pleased to give out Quaker Steak and Lube coupons to our customers that have taken a test drive and we also give out more coupons after purchasing a vehicle.

Mark and Jennifer Stanley were very accommodating during the 2010 Camaro Unveiling, held here in the Chevrolet Showroom. The catering they provided was a hit with the hundreds that were in attendance.

We are very happy that we have been able to participate in the 2009 Quaker Steak and Lube Cruise-Ins, and we look forward to other creative joint-ventures with them in the future.

We celebrated Jerry Pauley’s retirement . . . twice! We had a wonderful turnout on Tuesday, July 28th, with Jerry’s family friends and plenty of employees ready to tell stories about Jerry. With WOWK on hand they also did a wonderful story on 53 years in the automotive business. Then on August 8th, we again celebrated with the community with hotdogs, hamburgers and again, stories of how Jerry took care of his customers.Just a couple of stories that were told:

Jerry had been hired in the Service department just for the summer to cover peoples vacations. At that time Dusty Rhodes was one of the owners and he went to him and said he had done a good job and when they needed someone full time he would hire him then. Jerry said, “Dusty was pretty forgetful and I was young and needed to work someplace, and I figured it might as well be Rhodes-Walker. When the following Monday rolled around, I came back to work just like I was supposed to,” When he would see Mr. Rhodes, he would hide so he wouldn’t see him. This went on for about a week until Rhodes spotted him. “I guess he thought the service manager had hired me and the service manager thought that Mr. Rhodes had hired me.” So he just kept working.

Jerry remembers the first car he ever sold was a Chevy Monte Carlo to Ivan and Carl “Bill” Lee. Both Ivan and Bill and their families have continued to buy from him throughout all of those years, he continued to see even to their children.

He also told of a time that one of his customers bought a car for his wife for a surprise Christmas gift. He asked Jerry to bring the car to his home on Christmas Eve and put it in his garage with a big red bow on top. “On Christmas morning I got a call at home asking me where the car was,” he recalled. “I made the trip back to his home only to discover I had mistakenly put the car in the next-door neighbor’s garage. “Needless to say, it took me a while to explain to the neighbor’s wife what had happened as she thought her husband had bought her a new car for Christmas,” Jerry said.

He told of the time in 1978, Charleston had a huge snow and the dealership closed down. For Pauley, working was a way of life, and it was hard for him to just sit around and do nothing. He brought home a four-wheel-drive truck form work and was able to get around in the snow. “After hearing I was mobile, we stared getting calls form nurses who needed to get to work at Thomas Hospital and people who didn’t have groceries. Our children, Scarlett and Scott, and their friends took orders and Jackie, my wife, and I went to the grocery store buying many loaves of bread and gallons for milk and we delivered them to our neighbors,” Jerry said. He said he was just helping the community.

When Jerry was in good health, it was nothing for him to have a 25 car month. With Jerry Pauley, you knew what you were getting, honesty, integrity, strait to the point, and you didn’t need to question him.

Staring in Service part time to working in sales from 9 am to 3 pm in Used cars and then walking across the street to work a second shift in New cars, Jerry ended up with enough repeat business that it would do him for a while.

So the time has come for Jerry to retire and you all know him…. He is not one to sit back and let things just happen so….. he will still get phone calls from previous customers and I am sure that he will still work trades!

Jerry will be missed.

Congratulations to Jerry Pauley on a wonderful career at Joe Holland.

Wow . . . what an exciting adventure it has been creating a new Internet Department. Changes in both how we capture business and advertise now goes to the new generation. As we all know, change is the only thing that remains consistent when it comes to selling vehicles.Brett Holland has worked very diligently to make this new department blend in seamlessly with the other departments at the dealership. Both Shawn Amory and Steve Holmes have also been instrumental in expanding our market outside of West Virginia’s borders and in to the surrounding states. We are utilizing our virtual showroom to ensure that the buying process is as informative as possible for our customers. In the few short months that the department has been up and running, over 200 appointments have been booked and more than 60 vehicles have been delivered.

The Internet Department is utilizing the latest technology in order to reach our online customers. E-mail, coupled with the use of Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, Autotrader, and Cars.com is really helping drive new prospects to our website and then on to our lot.

This is one thing we know…people are using the Internet to research vehicles. Some will e-mail, others will call, but 92% of people in this area will do the research online and just walk in on their own.

We here at Joe Holland have recognized that this is not the way of tomorrow, but of today. Our new website is compatible with both the iPhone and the Blackberry. Having this compatibility will enable our entire inventory to be viewed online via your phone.

These are exciting days here at Joe Holland Chevrolet and Imports and we are continuing to integrate technology to better serve our customers!

This is some information regarding a standard procedure that all paramedics follow at the scene of an accident when they come across your cell phone. This is called In Case of Emergency –ICE–.We all carry our mobile phones with names and numbers stored in its memory, but no one, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our closest family or friends. If we were involved in an accident or became ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone, but they wouldn’t know who to call. Hundreds of numbers are stored in a given cell phone, but how can you tell which one is the emergency contact? Hence this “ICE” campaign.

The concept of ICE is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As cell phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name ICE. The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found out that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they had no clue which number to call. He therefore thought it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose.

In an emergency, the EMT on the scene will look for your phone and upon finding it, will then search the I’s first. An additional trick is placing parentheses around the ICE. This way it actually shows up first in the contacts list. I encourage all of us to place this number in our cell phones. Please tell your friends and family to do the same.

The difference of 5 minutes can save a life. Do all that you can to ensure you are protected in the event of an emergency.

When Joe Holland Chevrolet and Imports decided to give ourselves a new look in cyberspace, we decided to use a local West Virginia company to employ the changes, Christian Internet Service (CIS). We are more than happy with the new look they have given us and the work they have done to get it up and running. The customer service has been exceptional, listening to both our needs and wants and then applying that to our website.Greg Eilier, the owner of CIS, has been very accommodating adapting to our needs. As we all know, the only constant in the car business is change. Taking that into consideration, Greg structured our plan to be on-going and ever-changing. Knowing that our contract included this stipulation was one of the motivating factors with us choosing CIS, and we were able to get exactly what we were looking for. Dan Robinson, the web creator, has been nothing but a pleasure to work with from Day 1. With CIS being a local company, Dan was able to come to our dealership several times throughout the process and worked directly with our Internet Committee.

We would like to thank Greg, Dan, and the entire staff of CIS for doing such a fantastic job on the NEW JoeHolland.com. We hope that you like it just as much as we do!