Herb Chambers Bugatti Veyron

Car Czar Herb Chambers buys rare Black & White Bugatti Veyron.

A very special THANK YOU to Tom O’Keefe and our friends at Boston Tweet for shooting this video of Herb and his new Bugatti Veyron at Mercedes-Benz of Boston!

Find Out More about Boston Tweet at www.bostontweet.com and @BostonTweet.

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is the most powerful, most expensive, and fastest street-legal production car in the world, with top speed of over 400 km/h (407 km/h or 253 mph).

The car is built by Volkswagen AG. It reached full production in September 2005.

The car will be advertised as producing “1001 horsepower” in both the US and European markets. This easily makes it the most powerful production road-car engine in history.

Bugatti Veyron – Black & White – Herb Chambers – Photos Courtesy of: Luxury4Play.com

Bugatti Veyron - Black & White - Herb Chambers - Bugatti Veyron Photos Courtesy of: Luxury4Play.com

Bugatti Veyron - Black & White - Herb Chambers - Photos Courtesy of: Luxury4Play.com

Bugatti Veyron - Black & White - Herb Chambers - Bugatti Veyron Photos Courtesy of: Luxury4Play.com

TOP PLACES TO WORK | Herb Chambers

A personal note from Herb Chambers

Dear Valued customer,

Last, year at this time, I wrote to you about an important workplace distinction of which, I was very proud.

The Herb Chambers Companies were recognized as being amongst The Boston Globe’s Top 100 Places to Work for 2009. I am so proud to tell you, we have just been notified by the Boston Globe, that we have earned this distinction again for 2010.

This year we are ranked eighth in the Large Employer category. We were selected from more than 1,000 employers who participated in the survey. In fact, we are the only automotive dealer ever to have received this award and now we’ve earned it twice.

What I love so much about this is that it was the enthusiastic recognition of our employees’ that made this possible when they nominated our company as a Top 100 workplace.

There is no higher privilege in business than to have your employees emphatically state, “What a great place to work”! … And then, want to tell the whole world…amazing!

Thank you.

Herb Chambers

#############

The soul of a leader

Three top executives who all inspire loyalty among employees reveal their personal goals, leadership methods — and deepest fears

November 7, 2010

To be one of the Globe’s Top Places to Work, an organization’s employees must believe the people at the top know what they’re doing and care about providing a rewarding work experience. Anthony Consigli of Consigli Construction Co., Kathleen “Kit’’ Tunney of Associates for Human Services, and Herb Chambers of Herb Chambers Cos. all run organizations that ranked high in our survey for employee faith that the organization is in good hands. Top Places editor Michael Warshaw asked them what good leaders do.

• Globe: Anthony, what does it mean to you that your name is on the company?

Consigli: It might make the accountability that much greater. But I don’t think that it is the end all, be all. The reason the name is important is because I have three generations preceding me. If I screw up, I feel like I let somebody down.

• Globe: Herb, what about your name on your company?

Chambers: Well, I think it is different for me because I was the guy that started the company. I think that the pressure on you, Anthony, is five times greater than it is on me.

The company I have today is not what I envisioned 20, 25 years ago. At the time I sold my first company, I was 38 years old. I said, ‘What am I going to do now?’ and I went down to buy a car, and instead of buying the car, I bought the dealership.

Tunney: That is a great story.

Chambers: I realized how bad that particular dealership was. It just looked like the guy wanted to get out of it. I bought it right on the spot.

In the automobile business, you don’t necessarily have to be great. You have to be good. If you are good, you are great. Because most people say they hate car dealers.

We don’t build cars. They roll in, and we have to find a home for them. Our people are so important because the product is unimportant. If you like Honda, you’re going to buy a Honda whether you buy it from me or somebody else. The question becomes: Can we fulfill the need of delivering that car to the customer better than somebody else can?

I hold a training meeting once a month, and we have 300 or 400 people there for breakfast, our whole sales organization. Salespeople have got to be kind of cheered up all the time, because they have a tendency to fall down. Technicians are a kind of a different breed. They have a different level of motivation than salespeople do.

• Globe: Do you speak to each group differently?

Chambers: I do. When I am in the dealerships, I talk to the guys and ask, ‘How is everything with the shop? Anything we can do for you?’

All of our shops are now air conditioned. That came out of one of the comments I got from one of the guys.

• Globe: Kit, you came up differently, from being a staffer.

Tunney: I fell in love with the work that we do — with the staff that I was working with. And over time, wanted to make some changes there, took some courses to get a little bit of credentials in management. And happened to be at the right place at the right time.

• Globe: How did the experience of being a staff member affect your leadership?

Tunney: Having been there and done that makes me more approachable. I try to involve them in problem solving and decision making, because that was important to me when I felt like I didn’t have that voice.

I go out to a group home and say to the staff, ‘How’s it going?’ and I stop to listen to the answer. But I also provide formal opportunities for them to participate in focus groups and surveys to tell me how good of a job we are doing.

• Globe: Tell us something that surprised you that came out of that.

Tunney: Lack of natural light. We had staff in cubbies with no windows. When I decided to build our building, and we interviewed staff to ask them what they wanted, what I heard was: light. Now our building has windows right across the top. It is all one level. And there are suites set off at angles, so it doesn’t look like a motel.

• Globe: Anthony, what are you looking for when you tour your construction sites?

Consigli: I am looking for them to talk to me like I am a normal person, vs. a company president. I think there are some incredibly smart people out there that are building these buildings. They are equally important to this deal as I am. I don’t think they understand that sometimes.

• Globe: Kit, how important is the staff dedication to your mission?

Tunney: It is essential. You train, train, train. I don’t have a breakfast every month for 400 people, but it is the same thing. You’ve got to find out what their needs are, and you have to meet those needs. If I have a staff that didn’t do a good job because I didn’t provide the opportunity to gain the skills that they need, then I am the one at fault.

For instance, if you have an individual that lives in a group home, in a wheelchair, and then is maybe visually impaired, you need to provide training for that particular staff. How do you present a meal to someone that is visually impaired? How do you get them to a table if they are in a wheelchair? So you really have to be very thorough putting together orientation for staff. And follow up, follow up, follow up.

Chambers: In the automobile business, I am embarrassed to say how simple it is. The manufacturer provides you with information on all of the technicians, all the salespeople, the individual dealerships, how they all perform. We know where the problems are.

• Globe: Herb, you bought that dealership, it seems, almost on impulse.

Tunney: That is confidence, and I admire that.

Chambers: I don’t think I am smarter than anybody else. On the same token, I don’t think I am a lot dumber than anybody else. Believe me, I live on fear. I am always worried about everything all the time.

• Globe: Fear of what?

Chambers: Fear of failing in anything. I don’t want to fail.

• Globe: Kit, do you have fear?

Tunney: We’re federally and state funded. I am always wondering whether or not our contracts are going to get cut. And they do. Then I need to figure out, ‘How am I going to do more with less?’ I am always afraid it’s going to get cut so much that I am going to have to look at laying off staff.

• Globe: Anthony, is fear a motivator?

Consigli: Fear and regret. I stay up all night thinking about the things that could go wrong. Construction is a dangerous business. People die, and I am fearful of that. Quality problems, reputation — all those things.

I would say regret is equal. I hate thinking that I am going to regret decisions I made or didn’t make 10 years out, 30 years out.

• Globe: How do you avoid it?

Consigli: Thinking a lot about it. The greatest regret would be tanking a company that has been around for 105 years. I think that fear and hard work hold off that danger of making a decision that you’ll regret.

Do you screw up? Yeah. Everybody screws up. But you man up, you admit it, and you move on. If there are three things that I aspire to, they are humility, empathy, and accountability — just doing what you said you were going to do. I think that if I can do that more often than not, generally speaking, things will go well.

Tunney: If people have a healthy work ethic, they want to come to work and they want to be respected for what they do. And they want to do their best and they want to be rewarded for that. They want to have decent pay checks. And that is what we try to do.

Consigli: If we are the people behind our organizations who are responsible for that, we need to be doing the proper planning and working hard to make sure we’re putting things in place for that to happen for people.

Chambers: Everybody likes to believe they have good integrity. They all like to believe that they work hard. Who is going to set the pace of the organization? The pace of the organization is the speed of the leader, right? They look at you and say, ‘He really puts his heart and soul into everything that he does, or she does.’ So what are you doing to do? You’re going to put your heart and soul into it.

Consigli: The day that I stop doing that is the day I have to get out and let someone else take over. I have seen so many organizations where that doesn’t happen. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want the organization to keep going just like nothing happened. That’s success.

© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Roaring through Mass. in the McLaren F1

I was about 12 years old when I saw my first McLaren F1. Saw, not as millions of others did from the cover of a Road & Track issue, but saw, as in hearing my father say, “Hey, what’s that coming behind us?”, turning around, and watching the blessed Messiah of all exotic cars pass our Mercury Sable and literally part the interstate traffic.

We were mere miles from our home in Connecticut, and I was freaking out for another 20. No, Mom, that is not a kit car! It’s the fastest production car on earth.

At that time, I knew I had seen one of just seven McLarens in the entire United States, and I knew I would never see one again. I found out later that a company in Danbury, about 35 minutes away, was importing all the F1s from the factory in Woking, England, proof that Connecticut was the center of the universe.

In 2005, I witnessed the second coming of the F1 at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which was holding an exhibition of Ralph Lauren’s cars. I hardly moved from the velvet rope, despite Lauren’s impressive collection. Two sightings in one lifetime? This had to be the last time I would see an F1.

McLaren made roughly 100 road and race versions between 1993 and 1998, and it’s impossible to cite the exact number in the US today. Some people say there are more than 20; Chambers thinks there’s about a dozen. (And he should know. Jay Leno bought one after taking a ride with him.) Facebook groups and message boards claiming to document each McLaren try their hardest, but the owners of these cars rarely come up in the news unless one catches on fire or gets sold at auction for more than $4 million.

Herb Chambers Car Collection - McLaren F1

Last month, Chambers decided to drop his McLaren at his new BMW showroom in Sudbury, just 20 miles west of Boston. So I asked what anyone would in this rare moment, short of begging: can I please, please, please go for a ride? Chambers obliged, and on a sunny November I found myself holed into the F1′s left side, yanking the butterfly door shut, and trying to resist a hyper fit of feet stomping and flailing arms.

To be assaulted by such a high power-to-weight ratio, deafened by a 627 horsepower V-12, and stared at by every driver on the road is the car enthusiast’s reason for living. What, I wondered, would I do now for the rest of my life? The afterlife won’t be able to match being inside a McLaren at full-bore, running and running while the planet stands still.

For Herb and all the well-heeled car lovers with McLarens, here’s hoping, then, for a long life.

Herb Chambers Car Collection featured at Cars and Coffee Events!

Herb Chambers Cars and Coffee Events are held monthly.

These events are all well attended.

It’s New England’s newest car event showcasing antique, classic, exotic, hotrods, motorcycles and motorsports collections from the New England area and around the world!

Herb Chambers Cars and Coffee have become quite a must event for the car enthusiast population of New England!

The past two events have been tremendously successful.

In July Herb brought his McLaren F-1 to the event.

Be a part of the Herb Chambers Cars and Coffee event in August!

Saturday, August 14th, 2010 from 7:00am to 10am at
Herb Chambers Flagship Motorcars 385 Broadway, Lynnfield, MA 01940
Herb will be bringing his twin Daytona’s to the event!

Herb Chambers Car Collection – Herb’s Twin Daytonas!

Photos from Previous Cars and Coffee Events!

Includes  Photos by Michael Manning as part of an advertising supplement to the Boston Globe

Herb Chambers Cars & Coffee is New England’s newest car event

Showcasing antique, classic, exotic, hotrods, motorcycles and motorsports collections from the New England area and around the world!

Herb Chambers Cars and Coffee is for motoring enthusiasts looking for a place to take their ride, share stories and admire each other’s pride and joy

When

Saturday, May 8, 2010 from 7:00am to 11am

Where

Herb Chambers Lexus
25 Providence Highway
Sharon, MA
view map

Who

All enthusiasts including antique, classic, exotic, hotrods, motorcycles and motorsports are invited to attend and there will be plenty of free parking for your vehicle.

Free Coffee Mugs for the first 300 attendees!

Driven to succeed: Herb Chambers

Courtesy of: Boston Business Journal

Herb Chambers’ name is synonymous with his car dealership empire ­— ­as well as his ubiquitous commercial jingle.

Herb Chambers – The value of confidence

Workers want a leader they can believe in

By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent

HERB CHAMBERS WAS in the middle of expanding his car sales business when the recession hit, but he kept right on going with plans to open new dealerships and expand others. Now Chambers is hiring, and employees are glad they’re at a company that’s growing while their industry is gasping.

When the climate is gloomy, employees want company leaders to offer confidence, communication, and a sense that a bright future is being built.

Workers at these companies believe their professional fate is in good hands:

Herb Chambers Cos.: Twenty-five years ago, it wasn’t the norm for an auto dealer’s service department to wash the cars before returning them to customers, but Herb Chambers did it. “My feeling was a clean car always ran better than dirty one did,’’ said Chambers, head of his namesake business.

This year, going against the grain meant completing $50 million in new facilities. It’s that kind of thinking that has allowed Chambers auto dealerships to grow while other dealers are struggling or even closing down.

That sits well with employees, especially in the high-pressure world of auto sales. “I think it gives our people a great deal of confidence,’’ Chambers said. “They feel good about our company. They believe they are in the right place.’’

One after another, Chambers employees surveyed for Top Places cited the boss himself and the company’s growth as reasons for their satisfaction.

Not that Chambers has escaped the recession entirely. Sales are down 19 percent this year compared to last year, when the expansion was planned. But national numbers are down even more: from 30 to 34 percent.

“We never had a doubt about the future,’’ said Michael Hannafin, service director at Flagship Motorcars, a newly refurbished Chambers dealership in Lynnfield. “He’s a guy who believes in what he is doing. That trickles down.’’

Hannafin said Chambers recently pulled aside a manager who had reorganized a parts department, saying he wanted the rest of the company to copy the system. “You can’t measure what that does for an employee,’’ Hannafin said. “That guy was on cloud nine and the rest of his team was motivated, because he was singled out in a positive way by the CEO of the company.’’

At Herb Chambers “Cars and Coffee” A Great Time was Had by All!

On Saturday October 10^th, we kicked-off our fall selling season and commemorated the opening of our 46^th dealership in the Massachusetts-Rhode Island area, by hosting the first of what I hope to be many “Herb Chambers Cars and Coffee” gatherings. This event took place at BMW of Sudbury, our stunning all new state-of-the-art facility located at 128 Boston Post Road (Route 20) in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Whew… What an event!

This was a special time for motoring enthusiasts looking for a place to take their ride, share stories and admire each other’s pride and joy. An early morning crowd of over 500 enthusiasts attended with all manner of vehicles including antique, classic, exotic, hotrods, and motorcycles. As an added attraction, a very special vehicle was displayed — the supercar McLaren F-1. Few people have seen a McLaren F-1 up close outside pictures displayed in a vehicle enthusiast’s magazine. However on this day, the crowd had the opportunity to inspect this rare “high-speed sculpture” up close and personal. One of the young attendees traveled 7 hours, by car, from Delaware to see the McLaren F-1. That’s called passion!!!

Besides a stunning display of enthusiast’s and collector’s cars, our guests had the opportunity to tour our new 72,000 sq. ft. BMW of Sudbury facility and check out the 2010 line of amazing BMW vehicles. Believe me; a great time was had by all, including yours truly. Look for more of these events in the future!

Herb Chambers McLaren F1 sports car

By JACK SMITH

IT’S outrageous, Herb Chambers conceded, to pay $1 million for a McLaren F1 sports car. ”It makes no economic sense at all,” said Mr. Chambers, who lives on a sprawling estate in Old Lyme, Conn., equipped with a helicopter and a helipad.

As for the McLaren’s center-mounted driver’s seat, it’s totally impractical. ”It feels just like a Formula One race car,” Mr. Chambers said. ”It makes getting a ticket from a toll booth a real adventure.”

And nobody really needs a car with 600-plus horsepower and a top speed of 230 miles an hour. ”I have to send it to Montvale, N.J., to have it serviced,” he said. ”It costs $500 to rent a runway at the local airport to road-test it.” As he said this, he glanced at the car’s instrument panel to make sure the oil and water had warmed.

”Are you in?” he asked his passenger, who was struggling with the door of the F1, which slams down like a guillotine.

Hatches and latches secured, Mr. Chambers nudged the shift lever into first gear and gently engaged the clutch as the silvery, wedge-shaped supercar rolled slowly onto a country road and toward a highway. Once the car was on the entry ramp, the genteel tappa-tappa of camshafts and valves suddenly became a high-pitched, metallic scream as the McLaren accelerated onto Interstate 95, pinning its driver and passenger to their seats. The landscape was a blur.

”There’s really no way to justify it in ordinary terms,” Mr. Chambers yelled above the cacophony about the car. ”That’s the beauty of it.”

Or, to some, the horror. Although there are cars — a vintage Bugatti or a Delahaye, say — that cost $1 million or more because they are rare or they have a certain provenance, the McLaren’s appeal is more visceral. It is built to do one thing: scream down the road as fast as is humanly, or mechanically, possible.

So, too, are other $1 million-plus rare birds like the Porsche 959, Ferrari 288 GTO and Ferrari F40, though its value has dropped to a third of that amount since 1990.

Soon to come, if not already plying American roads, are street-legal versions of the Porsche GT1, the Mercedes CLK-LM, the Nissan R390 and the American-made Panoz GT-R1, each sleeker, sexier and scarier than anything ever built for the masses.

One reason car makers sell barely domesticated versions of all-out race cars (yes, the McLaren F1 began as a road car, but it also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1995) is the ”homologation” rules of racing: to compete in the GT1 class, a minimum number of cars must be sold to the public.

For the last few years, that minimum has been one, but given the economies of scale, if you’re going to build one for the street, why not build a couple dozen?

Though Madison Avenue hypes sex appeal and power in the most garden-variety conveyances, mainstream auto manufacturers are reluctant to admit that the most exhilarating and testosteronic cars of all even exist. With good reason, said Dick Fritz, who managed Ferrari’s racing team in the 70′s. ”European car makers are leery of American litigiousness,” he explained. ”If something happened, it would be easy to convince a jury that cars like these shouldn’t be on the road.”

The majority would not be if it weren’t for Mr. Fritz’s company, Ameritech, which specializes in making race-bred road rockets comply with Federal safety and environmental regulations. That means more than adding license plates. Mr. Fritz designs and installs American-mandated catalytic converters, evaporative emissions controls, on-board engine diagnostic systems, passive restraints (air bags), impact bumpers, side impact reinforcements, headlights, center-mounted stop lights and ”various warning buzzers and lights.” This road prep may cost $100,000 or more.

WHICH raises the question, Who buys these cars?

”Typically, these are dynamic, high-powered guys in their 40′s and 50′s,” said Mr. Fritz, whose clients include Ralph Lauren, Clint Eastwood and David Letterman. ”They’re not old money. Most of them have started their own businesses and they have a lot of toys: airplanes, racing boats.

”Most of them are good drivers, but,” he said with a wince, ”some aren’t. Frankly, it’s scary to think of a McLaren or F40 in the hands of a bad driver.”

Fortunately, he noted, it generally takes more than money to acquire a supercar. ”The factories don’t want one of these cars to wind up in the hands of somebody irresponsible,” Mr. Fritz said. ”It’s usually by invitation.”

Herb Chambers was in Biarritz, France, when he got his. ”The McLaren factory told me to charter a plane and fly to England to look at the car,” he said. ”If I bought the car, they’d pay for the plane. That sounded fair. I wanted to see if it was really a $1 million car.”

His skepticism was well founded; in the late 80′s, rich car buffs were paying $1 million or more for the Ferrari F40 on the presumption that it was worth that much because somebody else would eventually pay more. But during the recession of 1991, the Ferrari frenzy cooled and prices fell to a level of $300,000 to $350,000, where they remain.

Mr. Chambers fits Mr. Fritz’s portrait of a typical client. The 56-year-old Boston-born entrepreneur never went to college, but joined the Navy, hoping to become a fighter pilot. (He admits to having a hankering for speed.) When he got out, he used $1,000 to start a copy-machine repair service; when he sold A-Copy in 1983, it was the largest copy-machine sales and service company in the United States.

Into the void came cars. ”I decided I always loved cars, so why not buy a dealership?” he said. ”I bought my first in 1985. Now I own 13 locations with 23 franchises in three states. I love the business. You can really feel something for a car; it’s hard to get excited over a copy machine.”

Mr. Chambers had already owned a succession of Ferraris and Rolls-Royces. Nonetheless, he had never seen anything like the McLaren. ”I fell in love with it the moment I saw it,” Mr. Chambers acknowledged as the F1 rolled up to his helicopter and stopped.

”It was simply spectacular, but there was nothing gaudy about it,” he exulted. ”Everything is done to enhance performance, with no thought to cost. For instance, most car makers won’t cut weight by 10 percent if it costs them 200 percent more to do it. But McLaren does.”

THE weight-saving strategies include a body sculptured from carbon fiber, a featherweight tool kit with pieces cut from gold-plated titanium and a miniature battery. Together, they produce a car weighing 2,840 pounds, nearly 400 pounds less than a Corvette.

As for power, it is immediate, with no turbo lag. This is because the McLaren eschews turbo charging; instead, the 6.1 liter V12 incorporates 48 valves and 4 camshafts to produce 627 horsepower — some 280 horsepower more than the Corvette’s — and 550-foot-pounds of torque.

The F1 remains on the ground at high speeds because of aerodynamics: the body is shaped like an inverted airfoil, with 6-inch diameter fans sucking air from beneath the car and shooting it out the back to enhance the vacuum effect.

The McLaren people took Mr. Chambers for a ride on a test track. ”When it was over, I stepped out and I was sweating profusely,” he said. ”It was the most exciting ride of my life.”

He went home with the McLaren and has never regretted it. ”There are some things in life you buy, and then you ask yourself, Why did I ever do that? I bought a Lamborghini Countach once, and two days later, I didn’t know why I bought it. It had all these wings sticking out of it. But this, I don’t even have to drive it to enjoy it. I can just stand there and look at it.”

Yet the car is hardly devoid of amenities. ”Look,” Mr. Chambers said, opening a panel between the door and the rear-wheel well. ”Each car comes with its own matching luggage with the serial number on it. They also give you a Tag Heuer watch with the car’s serial number on it.

”A watch,” he repeated — and laughed.

Jack Smith is connoisseur at large for The Robb Report, a monthly magazine.