Hello everybody! I am Nate, a 17 year old grade 12 co-op student from Banting Memorial High, here in Alliston. I am friendly, approachable, and love learning new things.  

I wanted this co-op position at Ernie Dean because it perfectly aligns with my main interests; marketing, technology, and of course, the car industry. 

I am not “brand loyal” to anybody, so I figured that because Ernie Dean houses Chevrolet, Buick, and GMC that it would be great for me to learn the business strategies of all three brands as opposed to just one brand at another dealership. 

I find marketing to be very interesting, especially in an automotive setting. The ways that companies persuade you to buy their vehicle instead of the competition’s is so cool and amazing to me. For example, they would make a 30 second commercial as to why the all-new 2020 Chevrolet Silverado High Country is a better buy than the competition’s vehicle, which is clearly a debadged Ford F-150 Platinum. 

Another example would be the marketing strategy that GM used only a couple years ago where they showed people a new vehicle that had just been redesigned, but it had been debadged, so they were left to guess the brand and price, and give their initial impressions on the car. I thought those marketing strategies were great, especially the initial impressions one. 

After high school I plan to take a gap year to save up some more money to hopefully go to Humber College for their Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing course, or Georgian College for their Automotive Business course. 

One day I hope to own my own group of car dealerships, all situated beside each other. Like I said, I have no brand loyalty, so I’d have one building for all the major car brands like GM, Chrysler, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and so on.

Some small interesting things about me are I am massively into cars of all sorts; sports cars, EV’s, trucks, luxury cars, with my favourite being supercars and hypercars. My top three dream cars are (in order) the 2018 Koenigsegg Agera RS in Taipei Gold (1 of 1), 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (crazy fast), and the 2020 Audi RS6 Avant, (aka the coolest family car ever.) 

My favourite car-related movie would have to be a tie between Fast and Furious 7 (2015) for it’s scene with the Lykan Hypersport jumping skyscraper to skyscraper in the UAE, or Disney / Pixar Cars (2006) for it’s connection to my childhood. Like seriously, who doesn’t like Tow Mater? He’s the best friend we all deserve.

So if you see me around please come say hi, introduce yourself, I promise I won’t bite. 

Thank you to Ryan Thompson and everyone else here at Ernie Dean for the opportunity and I’m really happy to be here!

Be sure to follow my business Instagram account to see behind the scenes on video shoots, outtakes, bloopers, and extras from around the dealership!