Jim Moran (businessman)

James Martin Moran (August 8, 1918 – April 24, 2007) was an American car dealer and philanthropist whose net worth of $2.4 billion ranked him 390th on the Forbes 400 at the time of his death.

Moran was born in Chicago.

His father died when he was 14, but his mother insisted he stay in school.

He graduated from Loyola High School (now Loyola Academy) in 1936.

Following high school, he saved his money and bought a Sinclair gas station in 1939 for $360; returning to Chicago after his war service, he added a used-car lot, then opened a Hudson dealership, Midtown Motors in 1946 which grew to be the largest in the U.S. When Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator, he switched brands to Ford in 1955, renaming it Courtesy Ford.

As the first car dealer to advertise on television, he became well known in the Chicago area as "Jim Moran the Courtesy Man."

Moran married Arline Steveley in 1941, then served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1943.

He and his wife had three children: Arline in 1943, Pat in 1945 and Jim, Jr. in 1948.

The company had been unsuccessful at breaking into the American market at the end of the 1950s and was trying again.

Moran declined, but his friend was insistent that Moran drive one.

According to Moran, he tested everything to see if it would break.

While cruising at 55 mph on the interstate, Moran shifted into reverse, and the engine and transmission survived.

Moran concluded that although Toyotas weren't as stylish or comfortable as domestic vehicles, they were well-built, reasonably priced, and destined to change the automotive business.

(He ended up giving three 1960 Ford Falcons to slugger Ted Kluszewski.) By the late 1950s, Courtesy Ford had become the world's largest Ford dealer with millions of dollars in sales.

In the early 1960s, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live.

He and his wife Arline, who was also ill, decided to move to Florida.

On March 24, 1961, he became and remains the only automobile dealer to appear on the cover of Time Magazine.

However, his disease went into remission and in 1968, he returned to the automotive field by opening a Pontiac dealership in Homestead, which he subsequently moved to Hollywood.

Moran turned it into the world's biggest Pontiac dealership

In early 1968, he was contacted by a friend from Chicago who said that Toyota wanted to establish a dealer network in the Southeast U.S. and wanted to talk to Jim Moran, who asked what a Toyota was.

On October 26, 1968, he entered into an agreement to distribute Toyota vehicles from the port in Jacksonville, Florida, to the states of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina.

His first wife died from complications of rheumatoid arthritis in February, 1976.

Moran married Janice Maxine Kline on July 30, 1976.

In the late 1980s, SET was accused of denying dealership franchises to blacks who met the distributor's requirements.

Moran pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 1984.

He insisted that he had been given bad advice and it was not intentional.

He was fined $35,000, put on probation, and created a training facility for disadvantaged youth (see Philanthropy, below).

A number of Toyota dealers filed suit against JMFE alleging that they were coerced into doing business with other JMFE companies in order to receive the most desirable Toyota models.

Eventually, all the lawsuits were dropped after a settlement was reached.

and it remained #1 in sales through 1990.

In 1992, a congressional hearing was held to investigate possible discrimination.

In response, JMFE began the yearly African-American Achievers Awards.

Moran decided to sell it in order to focus on the Toyota business, but it was sold in 1994 to the Craig Zinn Automotive Group, the first company to acquire a Toyota dealership in Florida.

In an interview with Mike Downey in the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 21, 2005 as the World Series got underway, Moran recalled his 1959 promotion to give a free car to any Sox player who hit a home run in the 1959 World Series.

His Southeast Toyota Distributors (SET) was founded that year and in 2006, distributed over 400,000 vehicles, 20% of all new Toyotas sold in the United States.

Moran created other automotive businesses under the JM Family Enterprises (JMFE) umbrella, which is headquartered in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

JMFE is recognized as one of Fortune's "100 Best Places to Work in America" and the second largest private company in Florida.

The company grew from a distribution business into a diversified automotive corporation.

Today, those businesses also include vehicle processing, financial services and insurance products, retail sales/dealer technology products and services.

JMFE is an industry leader with 2021 sales of $16.0 billion and employing approximately 4,500 associates nationwide.