Nick Abraham, his Ford dealership mark decades of success

ELYRIA — Thursday was a day for marking milestones at Nick Abraham Ford, both for the dealership itself and for its namesake. Representatives from the Ford Motor Company met with Nick Abraham at the dealership on East Broad Street to present him with two plaques: One recognizing the dealership receiving the 2025 Ford President's Award and the other marking 25 years since Abraham had opened the Ford dealership in his automall. The award recognizes Ford dealerships that lead the nation in sales, customer satisfaction and service, and only about 10 percent of dealerships nationwide receive the award every year. The 2025 award is the sixth time that Nick Abraham Ford has received it. "All the award means to us is, when you have good customer satisfaction, you get more customers," Abraham said. "... As far as I am concerned, the award is just a byproduct of what we already do. That keeps our sales up, when we have customer satisfaction both in the front (sales) and in the back (service)." Family, friends and employees also used the ceremony to celebrate another major milestone for Abraham: 2026 is his 50th year as an auto salesman. Abraham has been working with cars virtually his entire life, having grown up working at his parents' gas station in the area of Amherst Township known as Whiskyville. In that gas station, Abraham said he learned about cars and discovered a love for engineering, but also where he learned the value of hard work. "I worked at the gas station, all of us kids did, and the deal was you got home from school, you did your homework, mom made dinner and then you ate it as fast as you could so you could go to (work at) the gas station and send dad home before the food got cold," Abraham said. Abraham also took to speaking with and learning from the other employees of the gas station as well as those who visited, and he said it was through these conversations that he developed three goals; to attend Fenn College (now Cleveland State University), to become a mechanical engineer and to work for the Ford Motor Company. He accomplished all three goals by the age of 22. After Ford, Abraham worked for a manufacturer Rockwell International for a number of years, but as his family grew he grew tired of the travel the job required. So, Abraham said he moved home and he went into business with his uncle, opening a Chevrolet and Oldsmobile dealership in Amherst, where he worked for six years before coming to Elyria and opening a Buick dealership on Cleveland Street. The growing business needed more room, so it moved to what is now the Abraham Automall on East Broad Street. Abraham would eventually add GMC to the Buick dealership and carried a number of other dealerships over the years, including Jeep, Toyota and Nissan. But, Abraham said, he had always especially wanted to sell Fords. This came from the fact that Abraham himself had worked at Ford, but also that a mechanic who had worked for a time at his family's gas station, Robert Hardwick, loved Fords and passed that love onto Abraham. The move to East Broad Street was in part motivated by getting far enough from existing Ford dealerships to open a new one and, after repeated attempts, Abraham opened Nick Abraham Ford in 2001. Abraham said that his success in sales was reliant on dealing fairly with customers and showing up for them even after a sale. "You have got to be honest and you have got to be consistent," he said. "You can't be a giveaway artist and then the next thing you know, you get greedy. And a part of it is, when people support you, you support them back. That's something that has always been big for us." Michelle Sartor, Abraham's eldest daughter, is the executive manager of his Ford dealership, and she said that philanthropy is a crucial part of how the family and the company support their customers. "I think one of the biggest reasons for his success is that he has always given back to the community," Sartor said. "That has always been really important to him, you know, he always felt that his customers have been good to him and he wanted to be good back to the customers and the community that supported him." While Abraham's dealerships participate in a number of fundraisers and charitable events every year, Abraham has a particular soft spot for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Every year, the Buick or Ford dealerships give away a car as a prize in St. Jude's annual Dream Home Cleveland Giveaway fundraiser. During the ceremony on Thursday, Abraham wore a St. Jude button on his lapel. Ultimately though, Abraham said, the key to his success has been a willingness to work hard and the belief that the work would eventually turn into results. "Once when I was young, I said that I couldn't do something, and my mother told me, 'There is no can't. Can't died when you were a baby,'" Abraham said. "I think I have always lived by that." Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.