auto dealership

Read this before you toss your nutty business idea aside. While visiting Las Vegas in 2004, auto-dealership fleet manager Rico Elmore decided he needed some stylish sunglasses for his honeymoon.

Elmore is six-foot-three, weighs 300-pounds and has a head to match, so finding shades that fit proved a struggle.

"I must have tried on 300 pairs and literally found nothing that fit," recalls Elmore, 36.

AutoNation Inc., the nation's largest auto dealership chain, said Saturday it hit the brakes on the popular Cash for Clunkers program three days early because it wants to make sure it can submit the paperwork on thousands of sales to the government before a Monday evening deadline.

AutoNation Inc. says it stopped participating in the Cash for Clunkers program late Friday because the auto dealership chain wants to make sure it can submit the paperwork on its deals to the government before a Monday evening deadline.

Shopkeepers in this pine-covered mountain region easily recite the list of "protection" fees they pay to La Familia drug cartel to stay in business: 100 pesos a month for a stall in a street market, 30,000 pesos for an auto dealership or construction-supply firm.

AutoNation Inc., the nation's largest auto dealership chain, says its second-quarter profit fell 29 percent as consumers bought fewer cars in a stressed economy.