About Park Avenue Motors
Six cars on a rented corner lot in 2009. Thirty-four cars, nine people and one very particular owner today.
Started by a mechanic who got tired of the sales floor
Michael Johnson spent eleven years turning wrenches for franchise dealers around Columbus before opening Park Avenue Motors in the spring of 2009. He had watched too many customers sign for cars that had been polished rather than repaired, and he thought there was a business in doing the opposite.
The first premises were a rented corner lot off West Broad Street with room for six vehicles and a single lift borrowed from a friend's body shop. Word travelled the way it does in Columbus — a neighbour, a church group, a shift supervisor at the plant — and by 2013 we had moved into the building we occupy today at 753 Park Avenue.
Seventeen years later the model has not changed. We buy fewer cars than we could, we spend more on reconditioning than we need to, and we publish the inspection sheet whether it flatters the car or not. It is a slower way to run a lot, and it is the only way we know how.
Michael Johnson, Owner
Four rules, written on the office whiteboard
Show it first
Every known fault, every reported incident and every repair invoice goes to the customer before they ask.
Fix it properly
If we would not put our own family in the car tonight, it does not go on the lot in the morning.
One price
The advertised number is the number. Taxes and title are shown separately and never marked up.
Answer the phone
No queue, no ticket system, no offshore call centre. Nine people, one building, one phone number.
The people you'll deal with
Michael Johnson
Owner · with the business since 2009. ASE Master Technician. Answers the phone more often than he should.
Rosa Tavares
Business manager · handles financing, titles and everything the state of Ohio needs signed in triplicate.
Dale Whitcomb
Lead technician · ASE certified, 22 years in the trade, responsible for the 172-point sheet.
Amara Silva
Delivery coordinator · books transport, tracks carriers and calls you when the truck is an hour out.
Columbus is not a market to us — it's the neighbourhood
We sponsor a youth baseball team in Franklinton, donate a reconditioned vehicle each December through a local family services charity, and keep the service bay open one Saturday a quarter for free safety checks before winter.
- Registered Ohio motor vehicle dealer, licence OH-UD-2009-7534
- Member, Ohio Independent Automobile Dealers Association
- A+ standing with our local business bureau since 2014
- All technicians ASE certified and insured