First Post

Despite working in the Internet industry for the past four years, I haven't thought of starting my own blog until recently. I suppose I didn't think I had much to say, but let's just give this a chance and see what come out.

Most of my professional life has been spent working on the sales of cars. I started my career at Saturn 15 years ago. It's difficult to remember what an exciting company Saturn once was from the perspective of 2006, but we really thought we were changing the world back then. I moved from Saturn HQ in Tennessee to California in 1994. I began to hear talk that Saturn would be handling the sales and service of the EV1 electric car and thought it would be an interesting project on which to work. Of course, I was young and didn't realize that most people with career aspirations at GM were running away from this project as fast as possible. In hindsight, I believe raising my hand for this project was one of the best things I ever did. I had great experiences, learned a great deal, met interesting people, and gained exposure to things that people at my level at GM rarely get to experience.

I hope to elaborate on my experiences with electric vehicles in the future.

I left GM/Saturn in 1999 after it became clear that our company was being pulled back into the huge mothership that was GM and we would be losing our ability to experiment and to do things "differently." It also didn't help that the exposure that I received to future products left me extremely underwhelmed. Let's be honest, I have been a car nut for as long as I can remember and General Motors isn't a company that fosters this... with few exceptions. I also had an opportunity to return to graduate school full time and figured that if I didn't leave then I never would.

Long story short, I got my MBA in 2001 and intended to try consulting for a while, but the economy collapsed and the job offers I had through school evaporated. I fell back on my auto experience and went to work for Mazda for a year before an opportunity to go to work at eBay Motors became available. More on this later.

Anyway, I hope to document my rants, raves, and general thoughts on the auto industry, the Internet, classic cars, and whatever enters my stream of consciousness. I hope you enjoy it and share your thoughts with me.