Steve Kalafer — a minor league baseball crew proprietor, Academy Award nominated filmmaker, and longtime automotive vendor and advocate for auto retailers — died Wednesday.

The trigger was most cancers, in line with a colleague. He was 71.

Kalafer acquired his begin in auto retail in 1976 on the age of 26, promoting out of a one-car showroom inside a Mobil fuel station with seven workers. He expanded the group, Flemington Automobile & Truck Nation, in Flemington, N.J., to eight dealerships promoting 16 manufacturers. He additionally had Honda and Jaguar Land Rover shops exterior the Flemington model.

In his practically 45 years as a vendor, Kalafer bluntly denounced automakers for enterprise methods he thought deprived dealerships. In 2016, Kalafer bought a worthwhile Nissan retailer, citing “the complexity of doing enterprise with them” amongst his causes for ending the connection.

Stair-step packages have been chief amongst his issues. The incentives compelled dealerships to just accept stock they did not want, he mentioned, and supply inconsistent and noncompetitive automobile pricing.

“It is very harmful,” Kalafer told Automotive News in 2019. “What FCA, Infiniti, Nissan and GM have accomplished has created havoc with their sellers, havoc with their clients and havoc with the worth of their manufacturers.”

Kalafar produced 16 movies, primarily documentaries, on quite a lot of subjects. Three of his quick movies — 2004’s “Sister Rose’s Ardour,” 2000’s “Curtain Name” and 1998’s “Extra,” have been nominated for Oscars.

Kalafer additionally was chairman emeritus of the minor league baseball crew, the Somerset Patriots in Bridgewater Township, N.J., a crew that simply turn out to be a AA affiliate of the New York Yankees.

Like a coach
Steve Kiley, normal supervisor of Flemington Infiniti, labored with Kalafer for 38 years. He known as his boss a “very pushed man in so many optimistic methods, and he had the power to make individuals higher round him, nearly like a coach in a way.”

Kalafer would give his workers particular cash that included his motto: “Be form, be truthful, work laborious, earn cash and do good,” Kiley mentioned.

“He lived it. He lived it daily of his life,” Kiley mentioned, describing Kalafer as a humanitarian who helped many individuals over his lifetime, together with quite a few individuals anonymously.

“We’re utterly heartbroken by Steve’s passing,” Patrick McVerry, Somerset Patriots president and normal supervisor, mentioned in a press release on the corporate’s web site. “Everybody who ever got here into contact with him through the years is aware of simply how particular an individual he was.”

“He constructed his dealerships and this crew from the bottom up with the purchasers, workers, his household, and the communities served all the time as his prime priorities,” the assertion additionally mentioned. “He taught us all the worth of doing issues the appropriate method, of taking the time to construct lengthy lasting relationships, and making a distinction wherever you possibly can.”

Dealership colleague Kiley recalled Kalafer, lengthy earlier than the mobile phone period, returning voice mail calls logged on a yellow authorized pad whereas on a vendor journey to Hawaii. He as soon as discovered Kalafer, carrying a gown, returning these calls at 3 a.m. from a telephone sales space.

“It is laborious to fathom our firm with out Steve Kalafer,” Kiley mentioned. “He is the best individual I’ve ever identified.”