Tony Marzullo of GAS Motorcars on Uncommon Cars, Fixed Prices, and the Ruf He Sold Too Soon

Tony Marzullo founded GAS Motorcars, an independent Atlanta dealership that buys, sells, trades, and consigns cars and helps owners manage their collections. In his words, the specialty is uncommon cars: “weird, funky, unique, modified, hard to get, hard to drive, hard to sell.” GAS Motorcars has been a brick-and-mortar dealership since 2012, and Tony says it has grown every year.

He is an Atlanta native and a longtime friend of Throttlecast host Grant Brewer. Grant says that nine times out of ten, when he has a customer or a car to send somewhere, he sends them to Tony, because he never has to call and check on the deal.

A classified ad and a Hummer franchise

After college, Tony opened the AJC classifieds and saw an ad promising up to $100,000 a year in sales. At 22 he put on a suit, carried a briefcase and a resume into Carl Black Pontiac GMC Isuzu Buick, and was hired on the spot.

The dealership picked up the Hummer franchise, and that set his course. H1 and H2 buyers included athletes, celebrities, and people in the music business. Some rolled up in a ’96 Porsche Turbo. Tony had grown up memorizing Car and Driver, Road & Track, and Motor Trend, so he could talk color codes, options, and production numbers with those buyers when nobody else on the lot could. The managers started sending them to him. Some of his closest customers today are people he met in 2001 and 2002.

Leaving retail to work for the customer

A mentor told Tony he could become one of the youngest general managers in the company. But parts of the business didn’t sit right with him, and he was working 14-hour days. He started counseling customers honestly. When a father came in to buy his 20-year-old son a Corvette Z06, Tony talked him into a Tahoe. The customers liked hearing the truth.

He also started helping customers who were deeply upside down on a car sell it themselves, so they owed less. The general manager told him to choose between helping people on the side and working there. “All right, cool. I quit.”

His first company was Global Auto Solutions, a brokerage that connected buyers and sellers. In 2012 Georgia began requiring brokers to be licensed like dealerships, so Tony got a building and started buying inventory. His first purchase was a small Volvo he bought for $8,000 and sold for $10,000. Then things were dead for about a year. Around 2013 or 2014 he got a floor plan through NextGear Capital, and GAS Motorcars could finally carry more cars.

How GAS Motorcars sells cars

Tony wants every car he sells to come back to him someday, and every customer to become a friend. Plenty of them stop by on Saturdays just to drink coffee. In the niche end of the market, owners all know each other, and one bad car can end a dealer. “It’ll take you a lifetime to build a good reputation,” he says, “and 10 seconds to destroy it.”

A few of the rules that follow from that:

• Fixed prices. GAS Motorcars switched at the start of COVID. The idea is to make every car as close to perfect as possible, price it slightly below market, and not negotiate. No extra fees, and no clear film or ceramic coating unless the customer asks.
• Show the difference. When a buyer finds a similar car for $10,000 less, Tony asks for the link. His might have one owner to their seven, Daytona seats, and original paint.
• Never lose money on a first deal. Some buyers walk. Tony says some of them come back three months later.
• Two winners. If both sides are smiling, it was a good deal.

He buys four or five cars on a good day, usually only one of them local, and many from other dealers. Some days he’s more like a grievance counselor, telling an owner that the Ferrari they bought was repainted and fitted with the wrong wheels, and that he won’t sell it.

The team grew one hire at a time: an assistant, a tag and title clerk, a photographer, detailers, salespeople, and an inventory manager. Everyone wears several hats. The inventory manager can fix a Ferrari seat with a part from a Volkswagen. And the Carrera GT everyone envies on Instagram isn’t fun for Tony to drive. Until it sells, it’s an anxiety attack.

A Porsche nerd on the market

Tony calls himself a Porsche nerd and says they build the best car in the world. His favorite car right now, of any brand, is the 718 Spyder RS.

Part of his case is cost. An older Porsche isn’t cheap to maintain, but it is maintainable. An engine rebuild on an air-cooled 911 Turbo runs $18,000 to $25,000. Something Italian can cost double or triple that, if the parts exist. He also points to safety and what he calls the 12-year-old test: any kid knows the silhouette of a 911.

On the record Ferrari prices at the recent auctions in Kissimmee, he sees three forces. Younger collectors want the cars they couldn’t have 10 or 20 years ago, like the Enzo and Carrera GT. Buyers spent three years sitting on cash while waiting for a crash that never came. And the record cars were effectively one of one. He expects limited-production modern cars to keep climbing, especially analog Porsche GT cars like the Carrera GT and the 997 GT3, GT2, and GT2 RS. Low running costs are part of that. He has a client who spent $160,000 on his F50 in a year and drove it twice.

Tony brought a 1996 993 Turbo with a manual gearbox, the last air-cooled Turbo Porsche built. He says cars like it are approaching $400,000, and you can still drive them anywhere.

Shepherd Center

Tony serves on the board of trustees at Shepherd Center, the Atlanta center for treatment and rehabilitation of spinal cord and brain injuries. He got involved about four years ago after a tour, and he started by helping with family dinners for patients’ families, many of whom come from out of state.

His focus now is patient experiences: a concert, a ball game, a ride in a Ferrari, whatever a patient would otherwise miss. When one patient missed a Taylor Swift show because she was in a coma, Tony spent a month getting her to one of the last three US dates, in New Orleans. It turned out to be Halloween weekend, with no hotel rooms, so a friend in the car business lent his plane and pilot, and they flew there and back the same night. Tony would rather do that kind of work than just write a check.

Rapid fire

• Car he’ll always love: a Porsche. About six months ago he bought back his ’88 Porsche Turbo, the first Porsche he owned, and he won’t sell it again.
• Most misunderstood: the Ferrari GTC4Lusso, the Porsche Panamera, and Subaru as a brand.
• The one that got away: a white Ruf Yellowbird, one of two in that spec. He sold it in 2012 for about $200,000 after tracking and driving it. He puts its value today at $5 million to $6 million.
• What people get wrong about running a dealership: selling good cars is much harder than selling bad ones. “I walk away from 10 deals a day.” If you don’t have thick skin, don’t get into the car business.

Next for GAS Motorcars is a second location in another market, plus a financial literacy series to teach people how to buy a car well.

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Tony Marzullo is above and on YouTube. Find GAS Motorcars at gasmotorcars.com.

Tony meant to bring his Pratt Miller C6 Corvette to the taping. It had sat for six months, and the battery was dead. It’s the same thing he tells collectors: a car that sits too long starts to break. At The Ride Lounge, a private car club with climate-controlled storage in Peachtree Corners and Midtown Atlanta, members’ cars stay on tenders, and there’s always a reason to take them out. See what’s coming up on the events calendar.