Victor Young's résumé reads like several careers stacked on top of each other: television and radio production, professional wrestling under a promoter connected to Hulk Hogan's family, and eventually automotive retail, where he worked his way from selling cars to running Morgan Auto Group, now the second-largest employer in Tampa Bay behind Publix. The whole thing started, he says, with a napkin. He and business partner Larry Morgan, fresh off selling his Tires Plus chain to Bridgestone Firestone, met at a Perkins on Highway 60 and sketched out how they'd do business together. Their first acquisition together, BMW Sarasota, closed on January 15, 2008 -- two months before the recession hit.
Surviving 2008, Then Opening Lamborghini Sarasota
Young describes the recession-era auto business in stark terms: banks could margin-call a dealership based purely on a real estate reappraisal, even if the dealer had never missed a payment, forcing owners to write eight-figure checks or lose their notes. Morgan Auto Group didn't just survive; in 2009 it opened a Lamborghini dealership in Sarasota, becoming just the 31st Lamborghini dealer in the country at a moment when almost no one else was expanding. That original showroom started life as a 12,500-square-foot delivery center behind the BMW store before later moving to the front of the property on Clark Road.
Outside the dealerships, Young flies helicopters -- he's blunt that a pilot who fears anything shouldn't be in the cockpit -- and founded Dunamis Premium Spirits, a Sarasota-based liquor brand whose name means "highest level of excellence" in ancient Greek. He walks through the distilling detail that separates a cheap plastic-jug vodka from a craft one: isolating the "hearts" of a distillation run instead of leaving in the heads and tails, then charcoal-filtering to clean up the finish. Dunamis's bourbon is barreled at 90 proof and aged a minimum of five years in heavily charred barrels for a smoother, sweeter profile, and its Zulu Hotel gin is built around a pilot's eight-hour bottle-to-throttle rule -- 13 natural botanicals, nothing that leaves a rough next-day feeling.
Roundabouts, From a Helicopter Pilot's Seat
Asked the show's roundabout question, sponsored this episode by Tominator Law, Young says he isn't the driver who stops and checks nine times before entering -- he treats a roundabout as a chance to turn the wheel for once instead of running a straightaway. He calls them expensive but not inherently bad, and singles out diverging diamond interchanges, like the one at University Parkway and I-75, as his favorite piece of Sarasota road engineering.
What you'll take away
- Morgan Auto Group's first acquisition, BMW Sarasota, closed in January 2008, weeks before the recession hit the auto industry
- Lamborghini Sarasota was the 31st Lamborghini dealership to open in the United States, arriving in 2009 when most dealers were retrenching
- Dunamis Premium Spirits ages its bourbon a minimum of five years at 90 proof in heavily charred barrels for a smoother finish
- The brand's Zulu Hotel gin was designed with pilots' eight-hour bottle-to-throttle rule in mind
- Young treats roundabouts as expensive but not inherently bad, and prefers diverging diamond interchanges like the one at University Parkway and I-75
“If it doesn't look good on the ground, it doesn't look any better when you get in the sky.”
“Every failure, one percent better every day.”
Places mentioned: BMW Sarasota, Lamborghini Sarasota, Clark Road, University Parkway, Interstate 75