Partners Purchase Honda Dealership Whose Owner Was Sued By Customers

KIRKLAND

A banner slung temporarily over the sign at Kirkland's Don Carlton Honda signifies change - change in ownership and change in the way the controversial dealership is run.

Owned for years by an Oklahoma-based car dealer who drew at least one lawsuit from angry customers, Don Carlton Honda has been sold to two partners - Al Courter, owner of Honda of Bellevue, and Larry Mallory, manager of the Bellevue dealership. It has been renamed Honda of Kirkland.

"Don Carlton has gone back to Tulsa, where he came from, as of this morning," Mallory said yesterday.

Courter and Mallorybought the building, equipment, furniture and new car inventory from Carlton, who owns other dealerships in Oklahoma. Carlton kept Don Carlton Honda's receivables and used car inventory.

Carlton's business practices were attacked last May in a class-action lawsuit filed by a former staff lawyer for the state Attorney General.

The suit claimed the dealership had cheated hundreds of customers, charging them for services - such as safety inspections and rust protection - that were never performed. It sought to have car sales at the dealership shut down.

Mallory wouldn't comment on the lawsuit other than to say that he knew it existed.

"I don't believe they succeeded" in shutting down the dealership," he said. Carlton `"as doing business until this morning, when he left."

Mallory quickly sought to distance himself from Carlton's

tenure at the Kirkland dealership. "It wasn't being run the way we felt it ought to be run," he said.

And Mallory put a decidedly local twist on the buyout, saying Carlton "was a guy from the Midwest living in different state (Washington) and different city (Kirkland), trying to manage and operate a store by remote control.

"In marketing and merchandising, they used a different slant than we would have," he said.

"People are turned off by high pressure . . . They hear come-on ads, they just don't respond to them," he added.