Dealer prep.

• Position: Automobile dealer Debbie Rice-Marko - People

When Greensboro auto dealer Debbie Rice-Marko visits Korea, her hosts at Hyundai Motor Co. don't always know how to take her. "I'm usually the only woman there going 100 miles an hour on the test track."

Perhaps the Koreans prefer more traditional roles for women, but they've got to be impressed by her accomplishments. Since it opened in 1986, Rice-Marko Hyundai Inc. has sold 5,000 Hyundais. Last May, Rice-Marko, 38, sold more of the sub-compact and midsized cars than any other dealer in the nation.

Now, she is gearing up for a brand-new market: Japanese luxury cars. Rice-Marko is the only woman nationwide with an Infiniti franchise. It took two and a half years of interviews and applications to get it, but she says she won over Infiniti's divisional office in New Jersey with her track record on service - her dealership ranked fourth among Hyundai dealers nationwide in customer-satisfaction rankings in 1988.

Rice-Marko feels at ease carving out a new import market - it's almost a family tradition. Her father, Garson Rice, opened one of the Southeast's first Toyota dealerships in Greensboro, back in the early 1960s. "My father literally had to pay for every car off the truck because no one would finance it," she says.

He owned five...