For Eley Duke III, leading Virginia’s franchised auto dealers is the latest chapter in a family story that has always been about showing up.

Eley Duke III has been around the car business long enough to remember that his first job at the dealership was exactly what you might expect for a 13-year-old: washing cars. But by then, Duke Chevrolet GMC was already much more than a place to buy a car. It was part of his family.

Duke’s grandfather, Ray Duke, got his start in the automotive business after operating a gas station and trucking business in Carrsville. He eventually worked his way into running a Suffolk dealership and purchased it in 1968, renaming it Duke Oldsmobile Cadillac the following year. Eley’s father, Eley Duke Jr., later joined him in the business.

Eley Jr. died of brain cancer in 1989. Eley’s mother, Lydia, stepped into the dealership soon afterward, joining Ray Duke and helping carry the business into another generation.

Eley III officially joined the family dealership in 1997 and began to learn from his mother and grandfather until he retired. Lydia is still in the dealership every day. Eley credits her, plus some great team members over the years, for being where he is today. “And one valuable lesson early on: ‘we’re in the people business,’” Duke said. Today, he serves as president and executive manager of Duke Chevrolet GMC and is the third generation of the Duke family to help lead the business.

While history matters to Duke (his family stretches back six generations in Suffolk), he is far less interested in preserving a family business as a museum piece than in making sure it continues to matter. “Community is everything to us,” he says. “If this is your community, you should want to have a better place for your community.”

A Family Connection to VADA

Duke’s connection to the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association goes back nearly as far as his connection to the dealership. His father served on the VADA Board of Directors before his death in 1989, and Eley remembers attending VADA conventions as a teenager. Decades later, at age 44, Duke joined the board himself.

After a decade of board service, Duke is now chair of VADA, representing franchised new car and truck dealers across Virginia. For Duke, serving the association is part of the responsibility that comes with owning a dealership.

“You should give back to the organization that helps you every day,” Duke said. “There are dealers that expect VADA to support them, but they’re not in the room, and I have a problem with that.”

VADA President and CEO Don Hall, who has known Duke and his family for decades, says Duke also brings an important perspective to the role. Duke is a single-point dealer with two franchises under one roof, operating just outside a major metropolitan market — a much different business than the large dealership groups that increasingly dominate automotive retail.

“He brings to the table something different that needs to be heard,” Hall said.

At a smaller dealership, Hall said, the dealer is often much closer to the day-to-day operation — working across sales, service, parts and F&I while interacting directly with customers. That gives Duke a view of the business that Hall believes has value well beyond smaller dealerships.

“There are some things we can learn from our smaller brothers and sisters out there because they tend to be more customer-centered in order to survive in a very competitive market,” Hall said. “His mentality — his ethos, if you will — and the way he operates is critical for all of us to hear and learn from.”

Duke’s message is straightforward: Show up, get involved, help each other. 

“The laws and regulations governing dealerships do not simply take care of themselves. Neither does the franchise system,” he said. “Dealers have to participate in the debates that determine the future of their businesses.”

Recent years have offered plenty of examples. VADA members have helped score major changes to Virginia’s franchise laws to prevent direct sales by manufacturers, strengthened dealers’ ability to receive fair compensation from manufacturer recall and warranty work, and more.

“If you want to have a healthy dealership and dealer body in the Commonwealth, you’ve got to protect it,” Duke said.

A Business Built Around People

Duke has watched the automobile business change dramatically during his career. That includes brands on his building, technology and the way customers shop for cars and trucks. Consumer expectations have changed, too.

The Duke dealership itself evolved along the way. The family added Chrysler, Plymouth and Dodge in the early 1980s. Buick, Pontiac and GMC in 1990 and Chevrolet in 1994. Eley became vice president in 2008, and today Duke operates as a Chevrolet and GMC dealership serving Suffolk and the surrounding region.

Yet Duke tends to bring conversations about the future of the business not toward technology but back to something even more important: people. The dealership eventually adopted “It’s All About U” as its defining message, an evolution of an earlier “Discover the Difference” campaign. The idea is simple: make buying and owning a vehicle less complicated and build a relationship that lasts beyond a single transaction.

It also means investing in employees and worrying about where the next generation of dealership talent will come from, particularly technicians.

“If we don’t find the right people, train them and keep them interested,” Duke said, “what’s going to happen down the road?”

It is one of the challenges he sees not simply for Duke Chevrolet GMC, but for dealerships everywhere: adapting to extraordinary technological change without losing sight of the people required to make the business work.

VADA’s Hall has also watched Duke personally for much of his life. He knew Duke’s father when he served on the VADA board in the late 1980s and watched Lydia Duke take a larger role in the dealership after her husband’s death. He describes Eley as “a Virginia gentleman” whose concern for employees is genuine.

“He really cares about people in the true sense of the word,” Hall said. “I’ve been around him for a long, long time. I’ve watched him grow up, literally.”

Eley and his wife, Nicole Harrell, have two sons, ages 20 and 13, and whether either eventually becomes the fourth generation at Duke Chevrolet GMC remains to be seen. For now, his focus is on his team, and the business and industry his family has spent decades building — and doing his part to position all for the future.

“The business is going to continue to change,” Duke said. “You’ve got to be willing to change with it and have a great team.”