Auto dealer was never short on drive

It was 1949, and John Adamich, a self-proclaimed "wild child" of Hibbing, Minn., was getting an earful from a high school counselor.

"If you don't shape up," he recalls the counselor scolding him, "you're going to end up being an auto mechanic!"

Adamich bit his lip. It was his dream to become a mechanic. Today, Adamich owns Dodge of Burnsville, where he employs 71 people and last year had sales of $40 million.

His story exemplifies how drive and faith in oneself can become tools to shake off naysayers and climb to the top. In the past five decades, Adamich has gone broke three times, paid off his debt, and always remembered those who helped him along the way.

It was Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis, he said, that enabled him to develop the skills and discipline to succeed. So for years he's given scholarship and building money to Dunwoody, which recently named an automotive lab after him.

Adamich, 73, sees the world in terms of his passion -- cars -- but lessons he's learned on the road to success can apply to anyone who sets his or her sights on a goal.

"Not only do you have to be strong enough to move a wrench," Adamich said, "you have to know where you're going to move it."

Adamich has been named Burnsville Business Person of the year, among other honors. He gives to the Leukemia Foundation; to Fraser, a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps children and adults with autism and other special needs; and, of course, to Dunwoody, the technical college that's trained more than 250,000 people since it opened in 1914.

Adamich also helped bring about the Dodge Chrysler Corporation's program to regularly donate cars for Dunwoody students to work on, and his own dealership provides a truck to haul around a donated Dodge Viper that Dunwoody uses to recruit students.

Recently, about 80 people attended a reception celebrating the new John Adamich Automotive Lab. Among them was Ed Delmoro, a Burnsville civic leader and longtime friend.

"He's never forgotten that he came from humble beginnings and did it the hard way," Delmoro said. "He never became lofty. And that's why at Dunwoody he wants to help young people stepping forward to learn a profession."

Humble beginnings

The urge to tinker came early for Adamich, who as a boy fixed trikes and bikes. At 15, he got a job in a service station in a Hibbing alley.

He pumped gas, changed oil, fixed tires. He even ginned up business by working out a deal to wash cars from a nearby dealership in quantity at his own station for two bits cheaper than the dealer was paying. That taught Adamich early what he could achieve as an entrepreneur.

At 17, he headed out from the Iron Range, where he had also serviced trucks in the iron mines, to attend Dunwoody in Minneapolis. In 1953, Adamich returned to Hibbing to work a summer job in an auto shop. The assistant principal at Hibbing High School came in one day for service and asked Adamich what he'd been doing lately. The teen said he was going to school in the cities.

"You?" Adamich recalled the man saying. "We voted you the least likely to succeed."

That made his blood boil, so Adamich returned to Dunwoody all the more determined. He landed a job as a mechanic for Northside Mercury on West Broadway in Minneapolis his second year in school.

He was working on a 1958 Edsel one day when life changed in a flash.

Gas sprayed from the engine, soaked him and ignited. Afire, he yanked a greasy rag from his pocket to pat out the flames. His face and arms burned, he couldn't see as he clung to the arms of two other mechanics, and they bolted a block to a clinic.

Adamich had intense pain on his blistered face but was back on the job within days.

Still, the trauma haunted him, and he found himself fearing another fire, or a car dropping on him. He knew he had to leave, but owner Elton Ellingson would have none of that. He made Adamich a salesman, and he sold three cars his first day on the job.

He and his wife, Betty, had two children. In 1969, Betty fell ill with viral encephalitis, her weight dropping to 79 pounds and her sight failing over the next 10 weeks. Family and friends helped at the family's home as Adamich went back and forth from the dealership to the hospital, and as Betty slowly recovered.

Even as he weathered personal crises, Adamich continued to build an enormous base of customers. Take Joe Wesley of Hutchinson, who, along with Wesley's family and friends, bought 46 cars from Adamich over the years. Wesley said it was trust and respect that kept him coming back.

Len Berg owned Trail Dodge in Inver Grove Heights, and though they were rivals, he and Adamich developed mutual respect.

It can be a tough industry, Berg said, but it's clear why Adamich prospered: He hired his son and son-in-law to run service and sales, and though they and dozens of others work at the dealership, you could stop by just about any day and find Adamich there himself, working away.

"It's drive and remembering your beginnings, where you come from," Berg said. "There's no magic to this business. It's just hard work and taking care of the customer."

By 1994, Adamich had paid off his loan and become sole owner of Dodge of Burnsville.

"I've gambled with everything that I've done," he said recently at his dealership. He looked out from his office over hundreds of gleaming cars, and he chuckled.

"Who would have ever thought," he said, "that the wild child of Hibbing would be here today?"

Joy Powell • 952-882-9017