Staff photo by EMILY BARNES
Andy Dixon, left, Alex Dixon, Peggy Dixon, Tyler Manuel and Ken Dixon in the showroom at Ken Dixon Honda in Waldorf.
It started with one Dixon and four employees. Fifty years later, Ken Dixon Automotive is going strong with more Dixons at the helm. And more than 100 employees.
Ken Dixon of Welcome began working in the automotive industry as a Buick salesman in Washington, D.C. When a Chevrolet franchise became available in the early 1960s, Dixon took the opportunity to have his own dealership, and with the help from those at the Buick dealership he was able to purchase the franchise as a combination Chevy and Buick dealership.
On July 10, 1961, Ken Dixon Automotive opened its doors. At the time, the lot had one showroom and eight stalls for servicing vehicles.
Ken Dixon said he still remembers his first sale to a Kathryn Posey of La Plata. It was a Buick, he said.
The lot, which today has multiple buildings, originally had just one building and a house for the Dixon family.
Ken Dixon said there was a house located on the lot when he purchased it. It was small, but at the time he could not afford to tear it down so he moved his family from the District and the family lived on the lot.
“Living next door was a great help [for Ken]; he was always there,” said Ken Dixon’s wife, Peggy.
Ken Dixon said in those days, it wasn’t uncommon to constantly be working to provide for families.
“In those days the wall was so large, you worked every day so the wall didn’t fall,” he said.
Living literally on the car lot meant the entire Dixon family played a role in the business.
“You wouldn’t dare walk past a car with a flat tire and not fix it,” Andy Dixon said of growing up on a dealership.
Andy Dixon, who was 10 when the family moved to Waldorf, said helping out around the dealership was natural to him and his siblings.
Even Peggy helped out in the early years of the business, recalling helping keep the books for the dealership by hand and at times with the aid of a typewriter.
Nowadays, Peggy said, staff wouldn’t even think of keeping the books by hand.
Staff might not consider trading a horse either, Ken Dixon said. But that’s exactly what he did in the ’60s when a customer came in to trade in his horse as a down payment for a car.
“We rode up and down the center of [U.S. 301],” Ken Dixon said about the horse.
In 1963, Ken Dixon added a used car building to the dealership and added on to the original building in 1966.
It was also in 1966 that part of the building, the service center, caught fire.
Ken Dixon said many tires burned causing very heavy black smoke, which did a lot of damage to the building.
In 1983, the dealership added on to the Chevrolet building.
Beginning in 1974, the dealership began adding vehicle makes to its inventory including the short-lived Bricklin, which died out in 1976.
Additional makes added to the inventory were Cadillac, Mazda, Hyundai and Honda.
For a short time, in the early years the dealership also sold Honda motorcycles.
Currently, the dealership has Honda, Chevrolet and Cadillac.
Andy Dixon began working at the dealership after graduating from college in 1973 and was instrumental in many of the changes around the dealership, including additions to buildings and expanding on makes of vehicles the dealership sells. The dealership currently has four buildings and nine paved acres.
In 1991, when Ken Dixon “retired retired,” as he put it, son Andy took over as president of the dealership.
Two additional family members, Alex Dixon, Andy’s son, and Tyler Manuel, Andy’s nephew, came on board as employees after their schooling was complete.
Currently, Alex Dixon is a service department consultant and going through dealership college.
Manuel is employed as a finance manager with the dealership.
Both said they enjoy working at Ken Dixon and most recently have taken on a successful marketing campaign, in which thousands of Ken Dixon Automotive pens were distributed across Southern Maryland.
Aside from getting the pens out to the community, Ken Dixon has had a history of being an active part of the Charles County community.
On two occasions, Ken Dixon has won prestigious dealership awards in part for its commitment to the community.
Ken Dixon served on many boards and was involved in many organizations during his time as president, including the Lions Club, chamber of commerce, the zoning appeals board and the board for Trinity Memorial Gardens, to name a few.
Andy Dixon is also a member of many local clubs and organizations.
Ken Dixon said the dealership is one of two father-and-son businesses in Maryland to be nominated for and win Time Magazine’s Quality Dealer of the Year awards for business achievement and community service.
Andy Dixon won this recognition in 2010. Ken Dixon won the award in 1982.
Andy said the Time Magazine award is “quite an award, because it’s your peers that put you there.”
It’s Dixon’s peers and the entire community the family plans to celebrate the dealership’s 50th anniversary with, too.
The Dixons are planning an event Oct. 22 with free food, music and a car giveaway.
Andy Dixon said due to the economy and low inventory, he and staff opted to not hold the anniversary around the time of the actual anniversary in July.
gphillips@somdnews.com