HOUSTON -

AR: Tell about where you were born and raised.

Langley: I grew up in a small town in southern New Jersey named Alloway. I have to admit that when I hear myself on a recording, I can still hear a little of that southern New Jersey twang; but because I have actually lived throughout the country, most of that accent has gone away.

Alloway is in southern Jersey, and back then it had a population of 400 to 500 folks. It probably still does. When I say a small town, it was a small town. Everyone knew everyone. It was mostly a rural area, and even today the predominate industry is farming.

AR: Most people forget that New Jersey’s motto is The Garden State; especially known for its small truck farms.

Langley: That’s right. New Jersey is a relatively small state but one that is very diverse, with the northern part — near New York City — very different than the lifestyle of the southern part, which is very farming-oriented. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t have some industry, because we did.  In fact, my father worked in a glass producing factory as a foreman … a real blue-collar guy. Mom was the traditional stay-at-home mother that was very prominent during the ’50s and ‘60s.

AR: What was it like growing up?

Langley: All of my summer jobs were on farms in the area. (laughter) I obtained a great appreciation for hard work! I actually have fond memories of that period of my life because even though the work I did was very, very hard, the farmers I worked for were good people. I learned a lot from them.

AR: What were the different crops you worked in?

Langley: When I was first starting to work on the farms, maybe when I was about 13, we used to bring in hay, which was absolutely the worst job in the world. It’s not too bad when you are collecting the bales in the field; but when you are putting it into the barn, it is the dirtiest, dustiest job in the world.

Then, when I got older and got my driver’s license, I started working on tomato farms, pepper farms … basically truck farming. I did everything, whatever I was asked to do.

One gentleman I worked for, in addition to farming, had an insecticide spraying business. He had a big unit that was pulled behind a tractor. My job was driving the water truck. It was a 1948 Dodge flatbed farm truck with a 1,000-gallon water tank aboard. I remember that we would spray the fields after I had mixed up the insecticide with the water from my truck. That was not a bad job. It required that I be there with the water truck, but there was a lot of dead time just sitting around while he sprayed the fields.

AR: (laughter) You talked about it being hard work, but that doesn’t sound too bad.

Langley: I loved driving the truck, but when I was in the fields picking, now that was hard work. I would get in the field by sunup, pick some tomatoes and then when that was done go about my other farm duties.  

AR: Do you have any siblings?

Langley: I have an older sister who is 16 years older than I am. We are close, but with that much age difference, we certainly did not grow up together in the traditional sense. I’ve always thought of her as being an adult, because when I was about five, she was in her early 20s.

My parents also had a son after my sister, but he developed spinal meningitis and he died before I was born.

AR: How did you like to spend your free time? Were you interested in sports?

Langley: Very much so. I liked to play all sports, but I especially liked football. I played varsity for three years in high school and then some in college. I loved football.

I also played basketball and was on the high school track team. But I was a much better football player than I was a basketball player or track runner.

AR: What position did you play in football?

Langley: First, keep in mind that this was a small high school. (laughter) I played lineman and linebacker. Sports have always been important to me, and I not only played the organized sports like football, but we also had a grammar school near our house where we would meet and play pick-up baseball.

We also had games at our house because we had a large side yard that was great for pick-up football or baseball games. A lot of the kids would congregate at our house because we had two major advantages: We had a big yard and, probably most importantly, we had a pool table! (laughter) That was a magnet for a lot of the young guys in town.

AR: It sounds like you had your close friends always stopping by so you were not lonely.

Langley: True, but something rather unique was that I also had a foster brother, who was my same age, with whom I grew up. My parents had decided that they did not want me to be an only child, thinking that I might get spoiled. They thought it might be a good idea if the attention was shared a bit; so when I was 8, my foster brother moved in and lived with us through high school.

AR: How did that make you feel?

Langley: It was a bit weird at first, because at 8 years old, you don’t really understand what your parents are thinking when they introduce another boy into the family, especially when he is your same age … we were only about a month apart. But in short order, he fit right in with me and my friends and we had a great relationship.

Our situation was not like other foster children placed in homes. In most other cases, the child is there for a few months or a year. In our case, the whole idea was to make it permanent. My parents actually looked into the idea of adoption, but his biological parents did not want to relinquish custody so that never happened. After high school, we pretty much went our separate ways. He still resides in New Jersey.

AR: Changing subjects, what characteristics of your parents do you see in yourself?

Langley: (chuckle) Um, let me think. I would say that one thing I see in myself that I remember from them is how much they loved family. Both of my parents were pretty frugal —like all the folks who went through the Great Depression — when it came to money. They could really stretch a dollar.

Also, they were very conservative, and I would say I have certain conservative characteristics. But I have to admit, there was something about that rigid lifestyle that as I got older I wanted to break away from. For example, they were not very adventurous; they didn’t travel a lot.

I was more a product of the ‘50s and ‘60s, where the general goal of young people was that you wanted to break away from mom and dad as soon as possible … certainly not like it is now where kids seem to go to college and then come back home to live! (laughter) Too often it seems like the parents have to throw them out; kids don’t seem to see the need or desire to strike out on their own.

AR: You described your father as conservative. Was he very strict with you?

Langley: Well, to be honest, he was not really involved in the disciplinary side … that was left to my mom. Dad had a very predictable lifestyle: Leaving the house around 6:30 a.m.  to get to his factory job and was home at 4 p.m.  The lady across the street would have coffee with my Mom in the afternoon, and my Dad would join them when he got home. We had dinner at six p.m. ;  he would then sit in his easy chair, watch a little TV, go to bed around 9 p.m. and get up the next day and do it all over again.

It was so regimented that you could practically tell the time of day by who was doing what at what time.

AR: You were an athlete, so did your parents go to your games?

Langley: I think dad went to every football game I played in, and mom went to most, but I don’t think he ever went to a basketball game. Nor did my mom, but she would sometimes come out when I was running track.

Dad had been an athlete when he was young, as well. His sport was baseball, and he was a pretty good pitcher. Actually, he was scouted by the Yankees, but of course, he never went pro.

Most of the time we spent together as a family was when we would go every year to the Jersey Shore, usually going to either Avalon or Stone Harbor. We would go to the Shore just about every summer, and then in the winter we sometimes would go to Clearwater, Fla.

AR: What about extended family? Did you have aunts and/or uncles in the area?

Langley: We did. My father had seven siblings all living in that area. In fact, the Langley family has lived in that part of New Jersey since before the Revolutionary War. So I always had a lot of cousins that I saw at family reunions. We also used to visit my grandparents for Sunday lunch every other week. It was always a lot of fun.

It is rather interesting that my grandfather never had a paying job until he was 40 years old. He was born in 1880. The family lived off the land; they farmed, hunted and fished; but Granddaddy never had a formal job until he went to work for the railroad. They would put in stores for the winter. Even though they lived in New Jersey, they could have just as easily lived in the West. That part of New Jersey was very open and wild.

I never knew as much about my mother’s side of the family. Her father, my grandfather, died when I was very young, and we didn’t visit my grandmother as much as we did the other side of the family.

AR: Were you a good student? What subjects interested you?

Langley: Math and science were probably my strongest subjects. In fact, when I went to college I started out majoring in physics, but I quickly found out that I was not as strong in those math and science skills as I thought. (laughter)

I think coming from a small high school gave me a false sense of strength in those areas. The size of my high school graduating class was less than 200 students, so when I got to college it didn’t take me long to realize that it was in my best interest to switch to another major. So I switched my major to business administration … probably the smartest thing I ever did.

AR: When in high school and strong in math and science, what did your career goals look like at that age?

Langley: Oh, I had it all planned out … of course it never works out that way! I was going to go to the Air Force Academy and become a pilot. That got into my head when I was about 11 when the nation’s space program was in full tilt, and every kid under the sun was caught up in the excitement. I think that was a wonderful time to grow up because your imagination just raced.  It was all about the space program, and I wanted to go the Air Force Academy.

That did not come to pass, so I decided to go to a small Virginia college, Lynchburg College.

AR: Why Lynchburg College?

Langley: Well, when the Air Force Academy did not work out, I was pretty discouraged. I mentioned to my mother about joining the Army, but this was during the Vietnam (War), and she totally freaked out. So one day my high school guidance counselor called me in, laid out a whole bunch of college catalogues on a table and said, “Every one of these schools will accept you. Pick one out.” (laughter)

The Lynchburg College brochure had beautiful pictures of its campus, and I thought I would like to be there. Sent in my application, got accepted and I’m not sure who fell in love with the campus more, my mother or me, but she was thrilled. Lynchburg was not right next door to where I had grown up, so I was able to get my space, but it was still close enough for me to be home if I needed to in just a few hours.

AR: You mentioned the Vietnam War. By going to school you were able to get a student deferment, but how did the war affect you?

Langley: Like all young men going away to college for the first time and having a war hanging over your head, I was motivated to keep my grades up! (laughter) But I have to be honest that during those first two years, I could have done better in school. I was away from home for the very first time, and there were a lot of temptations, especially coming out of a very conservative household.

My freshman year I had a student deferment. I was classified “1S.” It was my sophomore year when they (the military) had the first draft lottery, something many people don’t know about. (To put some order into the draft process, Selective Service put all of the days of the year into a tub and then drew out the dates one at a time. The first date drawn was used to draft young men with that birthday first; when that list was exhausted, then the second date drawn was used and so on. The lottery eliminated student deferments. Draft eligibility was based solely on the lottery number. If the quota was filled prior to an individual’s lottery number being called, that young man was pretty confident he would not be drafted.)

It was a very interesting experience because every guy was up that night as they were announcing the birth dates. Everyone had their radios tuned in. I still remember my lottery number, it was 296, so I knew that I was safe (from being drafted). But it was a very scary evening. One guy in a room directly above me was the first birth date drawn, and you could hear the wail through the entire dorm. As the night progressed, you could see the young men whose birth dates were drawn early just packing their gear and heading to their cars. It was an eerie night.

AR: Certainly the ‘60s were a very turbulent time …Vietnam, the Kennedy and King assassinations, race riots. How did all of this turmoil affect you?

Langley: I came to realize that I had had a very isolated childhood; stuff was happening but it was not like living in an urban area where you were bombarded with the unrest on a daily basis. In fact, I grew up in a segregated town; it was white only. As the civil rights movement began to gain momentum, it made a lot of people uncomfortable and some even angry.

I remember that as a Boy Scout I was working on a citizenship merit badge and during an interview, I was asked about the civil rights movement and my thoughts on it. It caught me by surprise because I had not really spent a great deal of time thinking about it, because it was something happening outside my world. It was not really touching me.

Of course, I had been exposed to people from other races. While our town was all-white, our schools were integrated and in fact my best friend in elementary school was a black kid. We all played together, but suddenly you had the race riots and the Vietnam War and all of the boundaries were changing.

Then when I went to college, I was exposed to all types of people. Probably the most impactful event occurred when I was on the track team (in college), and we had a meet in Greensboro, North Carolina. There was a (race) riot around the time of the meet, and the National Guard had been called in. After the meet, we were returning to Lynchburg in vans and drove through downtown. I still remember that it was dark, except for the street lights, and there was a National Guard soldier on every corner. It was spooky. It touched you. I remember being scared, but also sad.

I think it was during that experience that I began thinking more deeply about things, about segregation and the war. What I thought was right and what I thought was wrong. It was a real maturing moment for me. I can remember it like it was yesterday. The soldiers in riot gear carrying M-16s at almost every intersection.

AR: Those were certainly turbulent times and one description of those who grew up in the 1960s was that they developed an independent streak, an “I can do that” mentality that was extremely different than the attitude of their parents who had grown up in the Great Depression. Do you agree with that assessment of your generation?

Langley: Certainly. We questioned things that our parents never did.

For example, my parents lived in a pretty rigid box … there were things they did and things they just would never think to do. They were not unhappy, but it just never occurred to them to try something different. For example, if the doctor told my mother that we had to jump out the window, she was committed to having us jump. She never questioned him because he was an authoritative figure.

I never quite understood that and always thought she should question more things. When my wife and I got married and had children, we would always question the doctor. (laughter) I always told her to remember that someone was last in their graduating class!

AR: After you finished with your business administration degree, where did you first go to work?

Langley: It was at that time I first got directly involved with the automotive industry because I got a job at a dealership in Charlottesville (Va.), which was about an hour away from Lynchburg. I’d had always loved cars, I subscribed to Hot Rod Magazine in 1960. I was 12 years old. I got my first project car when I was 13. My Dad, foster brother and I would work on them and then sell them.

I went to work there as an office manager because I had been very strong in college with accounting. It was a VW dealership, run by Don Mann, and he took a chance on this young kid who was wet behind the ears and just coming out of college. I think he took a chance on me because my predecessor had stolen from him. He liked the idea of hiring someone who didn’t already have bad habits.

He was having an audit done when I came there, and I simply followed the auditors around very closely and learned a lot from them. I studied a lot of manuals, and it turned out to be a pretty good job.

AR: How long did you stay there, and why did you leave?

Langley: I think I stayed about three years, and it was a very good job. My wife and I loved Charlottesville. VW had an accounting and parts inventory control system. Each day we would produce these optical font tapes that we would roll up, stick into an envelope and mail to Lanham, Md. From that, VW would run the information and then send back to us a complete set of books and a month end financial statement.

I became very knowledgeable with that process. One day I was talking with my wife and even though I loved my job, I told her I didn’t see me staying in the same position for the remainder of our lives. I finally got enough gumption to go in and have a chat with Mr. Mann. He was absolutely wonderful. He said he would make a couple of calls to Volkswagen, and very shortly I was working in the information services department in Lanham.

The company was about to launch an online version to replace the tapes. It became my responsibility to train the dealerships in the new system. I eventually became the manager of the area, which was Dealer Computer Services. But I decided that what I really wanted to do was to get into sales because that was where all of the action was.

AR: Did that work out?

Langley: It did. I again went to my boss, told him what I wanted, and he said he would begin inquiring within the company. VW at that time had a regional level staff position called business management manager, and a spot opened in the Atlanta region. I got it and was responsible for working with all of the dealers in that region. We stayed there for about five years, first as a business management manager and later in dealer development. In that position you made sure all the dealers were playing by the franchise rules. It was in those positions that I got my first real appreciation for the importance of used car sales.

In fact it was through Volkswagen’s Charlie French, who is in the National Auto Auction Association’s Hall of Fame, that I was introduced to the auction industry. Charlie was going around the country holding seminars for district people to get them involved in the auction sales process. I raised my hand and said I would like to go. My exposure to my first auction was at Red Oak in Georgia, a Manheim auction. I was intrigued but I didn’t really touch the auction world again for several years.

AR: What happened next in your career?

Langley: I was promoted to the corporate office in Detroit and was not involved in used cars at all. I was there about six years and held the position of national sales planning manager. My primary responsibility was distributing vehicles to our regional offices. Later, the company (VW) decided it wanted to get back into the fleet business, and I was named the national fleet manager. We sold a bunch of cars to fleets and daily rental companies at that time under the buy-back program that nearly all manufacturers had. That is where I got much more involved in the auction business as these cars were bought back by VW.

I enjoyed the resale aspect and took that part of the business more personally; going to the auctions and reping cars myself. The fact of millions of dollars just flashing by totally intrigued me. I knew this was where I wanted to be.

I quickly realized that used cars had every aspect of the new-car business with one major distinction: price. And the variability of price. That fascinated me and fired me up.

AR: How did you end up at Honda Finance?

Langley: VW was cutting back, and I decided it was best for me to take a package. I then took a position with Saab Cars USA. My family still lived in Michigan while I worked out of Connecticut putting together their national remarketing program. I worked with them for about a year, working with RSA (Remarketing Services of America) to handle the operations, working with Stuart Angert and his team. We built a good program.

Honda then came and recruited me to start its national remarketing operation. It was not a hard decision. I was living in an apartment in Connecticut while the family was still in Michigan. Honda offered a chance for us all to be together in Southern California. (laughter)

AR: Did Honda already have a remarketing program?

Langley: There was nothing. There was absolutely nothing. Honda Finance had started as a very small division, primarily with the mission to finance motorcycles. It had never financed automobiles until just a few years before I was hired. About a year after it began financing cars, it decided to get into the lease business and their portfolio began to grow. They were about a year away from their maturities when they hired me. They were impressed by my VW and Saab experience. A friend, Dick Dennis, had recommended me.

Honda knew that the days were coming that those leases would mature, and it would have to get into the remarketing business big time and they had to get ready. The program grew by leaps and bounds within a few quick years. It was probably one of the most rewarding work experiences I have ever had.

I was there for about 13 years, and we went from remarketing about 3,000 cars the year I joined to over 200,000 when I left the company.

AR: How did you find your way to Auto Financial Group?

Langley: Honda had gotten pretty big and a smaller, more entrepreneurial environment really appealed to me. I left Honda to set up my own business in which I helped companies remarket vehicles. I was dabbling in various parts of the remarketing industry, when Steve Wheeler recommended me to Richard (Epley, AFG CEO), saying I had the experience to help him liquidate a portfolio that was nearing maturity.

I had both the experience with the end-of-term process as well as the liquidation of the portfolio. It became a pretty natural marriage and I think it has been great for everyone. I love working for a small company.

AR: How does AFG (Auto Financial Group) differ from a traditional finance company?

Langley: The main difference is AFG is not a finance company! (laughter) AFG functions as a service provider to the automotive financing industry. We focus on two important areas. First, AFG is unique in that it works with financial institutions and dealers to combine the best traits of conventional financing and leasing.

Let me explain. Most financial institutions want conventional finance arrangements, as opposed to leasing, because they are not equipped to manage the end-of-term process or the remarketing of returned vehicles. That is especially true on used vehicles.

AFG’s residual-based financing program is a fully insured, walk-away balloon loan program; the customer isn’t forced to make a large balloon payment at the end of the term. The customer can return the vehicle to the dealer and/or the financial institution. AFG guarantees the financial institution a predetermined residual value for the vehicle.

Customers like it because, similar to a lease, residual-based financing lowers the monthly payment. Dealers like it because not only can they sell more because of the lower monthly payment but the shorter terms provide a steady flow of vehicles back to their dealership where they can make a decision to buy for inventory without being in an auction environment. And financial institutions like it because they don’t have to worry with remarketing the vehicles.

The second area of focus for AFG is remarketing management. We have extended our expertise in the automotive remarketing industry to include the liquidation of repossessions. By aligning our company with skip tracing providers, we collectively offer a turn-key asset recovery solution to financial institutions. 

AR: What are your duties?

Langley: I am VP of operations, so I am responsible for internal processes, the remarketing program for both end-of-term and repossessions; and I oversee the repossession activity with the various companies we do business with. I also am responsible for overseeing the company’s IT work with an outside vendor.

I spent a lot of years working in the corporate environment—Volkswagen, Saab, Honda. One thing I like most about AFG is that as a small company it is very nimble, reacting quickly to opportunities or fixing a problem quickly. The company’s leadership is focused on quality and growth. It is the environment I am most happy in.

These are great guys to be associated with.

AR: What do you like to do when you’re not working?

Langley: I still like to ride my motorcycle, and I like to play golf.

And I love to grow vegetables in my garden. I guess that is a throwback to my youth when I was growing up in New Jersey. (laughter)

David Langley is the vice president of operations at Auto Financial Group.