What’s in a name? Plenty, if you are a dealer in Augusta, GA, home of the Masters Golf Tournament, and your store is called Bobby Jones Ford.
In naming his dealership, Frank Lawrence drew on the fame of Jones, the late, great golfer linked to the Masters because of his legendary play there back in the 1920s.
Some years ago, a Sports Illustrated reporter, curious about the store name, interviewed Lawrence’s son, who works at the family business.
“The reporter asked if Bobby Jones started the dealership,” Lawrence tells me at the National Automobile Dealers Assn. convention in Orlando. “My son said, ‘No.’
“Then the reporter asked if we had bought the use of the name. When my son said we didn’t, the reporter said, ‘Then what gives you the right to name your dealership Bobby Jones Ford?’
“My son said, ‘Well, because we’re on Bobby Jones Expressway,’ which we are,” Lawrence says. “I was proud of my son for thinking fast.”
