For her leadership role in WANADA and outstanding contributions to her industry and community, Tamara C. Darvish, vice president of DARCARS Toyota, Silver Spring, MD, has been nominated by WANADA for the 2005 TIME Magazine Quality Dealer of the Year Award (TMQDA). The award will be given at the 2005 NADA Convention in New Orleans.

As a member of the WANADA Board of Directors since1995, Darvish has served on most of the association’s committees as well as two-term chairman of The Washington Auto Show, chairman of The Snow Ball for the past four years, and chairman of the Bobby Mitchell Hall of Fame Golf Classic since 2000. Under her leadership, WANADA led the way on raising millions of dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Boys & Girls Clubs. Taken together all of this has had a positive residual effect on improving the image of all dealers in the region.

Darvish, who now serves on the WANADA Executive Committee, has been a high-energy catalyst to bring dealers together and rally them in support of their industry and community. “I used my position at WANADA to try and convince dealers that we could have a much greater impact collectively in both our industry and our communities than we would individually. We could get a bigger bang for the buck if we combined our talents and our strengths in support of major civic and charitable events like The Snow Ball and Bobby Mitchell Classic.”

The daughter of John R. Darvish, president and founder of DARCARS Automotive Group, Tammy literally grew up in a dealership, working part time and summers during school breaks. After graduating from Northwood University and NADA’s Dealer Candidate Academy, she expected to be placed in a general manager position at one of her father’s dealerships. But John Darvish had other ideas. She would work her way through all areas of the dealership – sales, service, parts, body shop, even working on cars as a technician and body painter.

“Although I resented it at the time, I am now a far better dealer-operator because of the thorough hands-on training,” says Tammy.

“Her opportunity to become a dealer-operator came in August 1986, taking ownership of a business that needed a boost in the national Toyota network. “There was a lot of pressure on me as a dealer’s daughter to prove we could do better, and we went to work building a team that believed we could succeed,” said Tammy.

With a strong emphasis on customer satisfaction and employee training, DARCARS Toyota won its first President’s Award in 1990, and was ranked in the top ten Toyota dealerships nationwide, where it has remained. “We have received the President’s Award every year but one since,” says Tammy. “But the year we missed was a valuable lesson: Never take your eye off the ball and, more important, never forget where you came from.”

DARCARS Toyota has also been a recipient of Toyota’s “Excellence Awards” for F&I, sales, service, parts and customer relations, and Darvish has served on the Toyota Board of Governors for the past 14 years, the Toyota Customer Service Advisory Board for 11 years as well as the Toyota Dealership Council since 1994.

Her hard work on behalf of her community and industry is a product of the family philosophy and dealership culture instilled in her by her father. “He always told us, ‘You will have everything you want if you learn how to give,’” Tammy recalls. “Today, we always use this line in our fundraisers: ‘There are two kinds of people: those who need help and those who can help.’ The fact that we can help is very rewarding to me.”

Beginning with her first assignment out of college to raise funds for a seriously ill little girl who needed a kidney transplant, Tammy Darvish and the DARCARS staff have put their heart and soul into fundraising projects to benefit a wide variety of causes, including the Parkinsons Research Foundation, the Children’s Inn at NIH, “Fit for a Kid” child car safety checks, Project “Safe Kids,” Parents of Downs Syndrome, and a host of other civic and charitable organizations.

“I’m very proud of the difference we have made,” says Tammy.