Denver dealer Ivette Dominguez honored; Pinto probe recalled
Ivette Dominguez, president of
Alpine Buick GMC in Littleton, has been honored with inclusion in the 100 Leading Women in the North American Auto Industry, awarded every five years by Automotive News in Detroit.
Two other Colorado car dealers honored previously with selection to the 100 Leading Women awards are Barbara Vidmar of Pueblo in 2000, and Lisa Schomp of Littleton in 2010. Jason Stein, publisher of Automotive News, said of this year’s recipients, “Over the past two decades, we have celebrated 372 Leading Women in all, a number of them several times. If these females were blazing trails in 2000, they are now widening a well- paved road to the future. And if the 2020 list is any indication, this industry continues to be enriched by unique individuals accomplishing remarkable things.”
Dominguez, who has worked in the auto industry for 30 years, purchased the Buick GMC store in Littleton in 2005. She bought a second dealership in 2017 and, today, she is the dealer in other auto businesses in Colorado, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma. A little more than a month ago, Alpine moved into a new facility on W. County Line Road, Littleton.
As I read through the list of 372 women who have been honored in the five- time 100 Leading
Women awards, I paused on a name out of the past – Joan Claybrook, an honoree in 2000 and a repeat winner in 2010. In the late 1970s, after stepping out of the Post’s Page One Editor position and becoming the paper’s Automotive Editor and member of the Business News department, I soon became interested in an attack on the Ford Pinto by Claybrook, who then was national highway traffic safety administrator for President Jimmy Carter. Attention was focused on the Pinto over evidence that it sometimes when struck from behind would burst into flames. Ford in June 1978 recalled 1.5 million Pintos and the little coupe took a severe sales dive, never to recover.
I had been told by several auto executives that automobile fire statistics indicated that other small cars had a higher percentage of fires than did the Ford.
From my desk in the Post Building at 15th and California in downtown Denver, I had several phone conversations with Claybrook, from her office in Washington.
With the help of Leonard “Buzz” Larson, the Post’s Washington correspondent at that time, I obtained auto fire statistics that showed half a dozen or more small cars had higher percentages of fires.
Claybrook told me that, yes, she knew of the statistics, and though there were other models with higher percentages of fires, the Ford Pinto was best- known and a runaway leader in sales. A lesser- known model would not have been nearly so effective in the campaign toward fire safety in automobiles, she reckoned.
Contact Bud Wells at budwellscarspcomcast. net.