Future Coming Fast for Car Dealer

STAMFORD, Conn. — Lena Spagnuolo's first car didn't have anything like the gadgets and luxuries of today's automobiles. Sitting inside her office at Stamford Ford Lincoln, she's amazed at the changes and ponders what the future holds.

“My first car was a 1981 Fiat Spider that I got from my uncle's dealership,” Spagnuolo says. “It was a five-speed manual transmission with no power steering. I still have it, there's only 54,000 miles on it.”

The vehicles inside the dealership have come a long way. A sales rep comes in to Lena's office to update her on the cars' ability to interface with 4G network phones. 3G phones work fine, but the newer technology still needs some tweaks before it will integrate properly with the built-in vehicle commands.

“Ford is going to stop putting CD players in the cars,” Spagnuolo says. Soon the decades-old music format will be relegated to the same dusty shelves as cassette and eight-track players. “Everyone has MP3 players now. So they're going to put in connections for those instead," she says. 

Ford's have always been in Spagnuolo's life. The uncle she bought the Spider from owned and operated a Ford and Fiat dealership. Her first career was as a florist, but after 9/11 the business suffered and she went to work for at a cousin's dealership. She wouldn't dream of leaving the gearheads behind and heading back to flowers.

“When you are a florist all you get to meet are brides and their mothers. I loved it, but this gives me a chance to interact with a much more diverse crowd,” Lena says.

When an opportunity to move from her cousin's dealership to Stamford Ford Lincoln came about, Spagnuolo jumped on it, with the family blessing of course. The Stamford native lives within minutes of the dealership, whereas her cousin's was an 80-minute drive everyday.

With that sort of commute in her past it is little surprise that Spagnuolo is impressed by the increases in fuel efficiency in the newer vehicles. That she can also literally tell the car what temperature to set the air conditioner at is also impressive, especially in light of her first car's hand crank to roll down the windows.

Looking out at the sales floor, Spagnuolo compares it all to the Hanna-Barbera futuristic cartoon, “The Jetsons.” She smiles and says, “I have no idea what they are going to do next.”

What was your first car like? 

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