Chad Zender, Chairmen of the Alberta Motor Dealers Association presents Garrett Scott of the Scottsville Automotive Group in Red Deer with a 2020 Dealer of Excellence Award. (Supplied)

By Sheldon Spackman

Prestigious Recognition

Red Deer auto dealer receives prestigious honour from provincial peers

Sep 23, 2020 | 11:29 AM

A Red Deer automotive dealer has been announced as the youngest person to ever be named an Alberta Dealer of Excellence.

Garrett Scott of the Scottsville Automotive Group in Red Deer has been announced as a recipient of the Motor Dealers’ Association of Alberta (MDA) 2020 Alberta Dealer of Excellence.

Scott, a third-generation auto dealer, says he’s humbled to be honoured by his peers with the same award bestowed upon his father Gordon in 2008.

“I’m proud of our whole dealership, our whole team and everything else that kind of all culminates together to make this work,” the 34-year-old shared.

“There’s been a lot of people from within the industry, and even outside of the industry, that have reached out to congratulate me, and that’s been pretty special,” he admits. “I would like to thank them publicly as much as I can for doing so. It’s made me feel pretty special and pretty important that they’d go out of their way to do that.”

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Scott highlighted two major factors he feels led to him receiving the award.

“We do a bit of an industry-unique process when it comes to our sales staff and parts and service staff, and that’s garnered a lot of attention recently,” he explained. “Then I think the part that put me over the top would have been building the world’s first Passive House car dealership for our Subaru store. Both those two things have probably sealed the deal for me.”

The Scottsville Group’s unique approach to serving customers has them deal with the same staff member throughout the vehicle buying process, while the Passive House offers a high efficiency facility that minimizes ecological impact and significantly reduces operating costs.

Scott says his experience on boards of the Alberta and Canadian auto dealers associations has also been valuable to his business approach.

“I got a chance to learn some of the legislations and regulations that motivate our industries and why they’re there. But also, get a better understanding and broader understanding of what goes on not only just in our industry, but from a different perspective I suppose.”

Some of the numerous groups that have benefited from Scott’s support of the community include the Salvation Army, The Mustard Seed, Big Brothers and Big Sisters and Normandeau School.

“Our association wants our award recipients to be involved in their communities, and I think our reputation over the last 50 years that we’ve been here has been maybe the biggest contributor in the automotive industry back to our community. So we’re pretty proud of that and that we’ve been able to share a bit with our communities since the pandemic struck, and also try to keep the great team atmosphere that we’ve created over these years together and keep everybody employed to the best of our abilities without doing any layoffs during COVID.”