Content area
Full text
Paul Passarelli
AGE: 39
POSITION: General manager, Leader Auto Group, New York
Paul Passarelli had just gotten a big break: In September 2008, he was named general manager of Garden City Mazda in Hempstead, N.Y., by a group of auto industry outsiders who had plans to build a dealership group from the ground up.
The same month, Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting off the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and delivering a gut punch to auto sales across the country.
"I'm sitting there thinking, 'OK, this is going to be a rough one. How do we give this one back?'" Passarelli recalls with a laugh. "But it doesn't work that way."
Despite the poor timing, the owners gave Passarelli...