Dealer shifts his career to high gear.

• Position: Chandler B. Lee, President and CEO, Classic Cadillac-GMC Trucks Inc. - People

Chandler B. Lee, president and CEO of Classic Cadillac-GMC Trucks Inc. in Winston-Salem, has a simple formula for success: "I refuse to fail."

Lee, who hails from Mount Clemens, Mich., a Detroit suburb, got his start selling upscale autos in 1986 when he bought Marko Motors in Southern Pines. At the time, sales of Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks and GMC trucks were about $5 million a year. By October 1991, sales had increased to $20 million, and Lee was one of 150 in the United States to be named an Oldsmobile Elite Dealer and the first black to earn the honor.

He set his sights on a larger market, sold Chandler Lee Motors Inc. and bought the financially troubled Jerry Watkins Cadillac-GMC Trucks in the Twin City.

"When I came here, all the employees had been laid off and there was no inventory -- no cars and no parts," he says. Sales, which were $10 million in 1990, hit $15 million in 1992 and are up 31% for the first seven months of 1993 over the same period in 1992, he says.

The son of an Army procurement officer, politician and civil-rights leader, Lee earned his bachelor's degree from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in 1974 with a triple major in mechanical engineering, business law and political science.

He joined General Motors Corp. as a mechanical engineer. For 10 years, he...