Champ Carroll Hinton was born in Fort Smith, Ark., in 1929
and started working at a local used car lot when he was just 16. He was good at
it. He was a “natural,” because he liked people and enjoyed hard work. After
four years in the U.S. Air Force in Germany, Champ settled in “the car capital
of the world,” Detroit, Mich., to launch a career in the auto sales business.
It wasn’t long before he was the top salesman in his
company, and within a year he was promoted to sales manager. A couple years
later, he bought a new-car dealership in Ann Arbor, Mich., which he called
Champ Hinton Arborland Dodge.
In 1969, Champ moved back to his hometown of Fort Smith and
opened another new-car dealership – Hinton-Cox Pontiac. His partner in this
business? It was JT Cox, the man who’d given Champ his start in used cars back
in high school. The dealership was very successful for five years, and in 1973
it became simply Champ Hinton Pontiac. Over the next 20 years, Champ Hinton
Pontiac received numerous sales awards as the highest-volume dealer in the
region.
Champ sold the Pontiac dealership in 1983 with plans to
retire, but within a year he began missing the car business and interacting
with his customers, so he opened Champ Hinton Enterprises. His goal? Sell
quality used cars in a different way, take the mumbo-jumbo out of the process
and make customers happy. Did it work? Yes – customers from this era are still
buying their cars from Champ Hinton.
Today Champ is “retired” but maintains an office and an
advisory capacity with the dealership. His daughter, Lisa Hinton, has been with
the company since 1996 and became the sole owner of Champ Hinton Enterprises in
2007. She oversees all day-to-day business including the purchase of vehicles
and management of the sales team.
Lisa hopes that her children will one day become part of the
business as the family carries on the tradition of honesty, integrity and good
old-fashioned common sense that Champ Hinton has always been known for.
Champ Hinton Enterprises is a member of the:
- Oklahoma Better Business Bureau
- Oklahoma Independent Automobile Dealer Association
- Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce
- Pocola Chamber of Commerce
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