Gus Machado found TV and became a Miami car and philanthropic giant. He has died at 87
Gus Machado was best known for his car dealerships and his commercials. He always seemed to be on TV. But Machado also was an inspiration to exiles and a leader in philanthropy.
The businessman died Monday at his Coconut Grove home. Machado was 87, said Ana Arisso, his longtime assistant at Gus Machado Ford in Hialeah, who confirmed his death.
“What I’m best known for is selling cars and selling cars has been very, very good for me,” Machado told South Florida’s PBS in a video profile in 2013.
The Machado name
Machado first put his name on the car industry in 1982 when he bought an existing dealership that he renamed Gus Machado Buick-GMC.
If you watched TV at any time from the early 1980s on, you were likely to catch one of Machado’s commercials. His appearances helped that first major dealership more than double its sales from $20 million in 1982 to $43 million in 1984.
In 1984, Machado purchased Johnson Ford and turned it into Gus Machado Ford in Hialeah. The dealership on busy 49th Street would become the top Ford dealer in Miami-Dade County and rank among the 25 top Ford dealerships nationwide.
Putting the Machado name on his dealerships, which would grow to include a location on South Dixie Highway in the Palmetto Bay and Kendall area in 2009, “was a matter of pride,” Machado told the Miami News in a 1987 profile. “I didn’t want to call it anything else because of the fact the Hispanic population was so large in Hialeah.”
Remembering Cuba
Traditions were important to Machado.
He left Cuba, but Cuba didn’t leave his soul — from the Christmas Eve lechon he and his family enjoyed for decades to the Cuban music he loved to his yearning to see Cuba free again.
In 2003, for instance, Machado was one of the founders of the US-Cuba Democracy PAC, a bipartisan political action committee that, among other endeavors, lobbied Congress to prevent sanctions against the Cuban government from being lifted.
TV appearances
In 2003, Gus Machado Ford received Ford Motor Company’s highest honor — the President’s Award, which recognizes the top 450 Ford and Lincoln Mercury dealerships in the U.S. and Canada. Machado’s dealership at 1200 W. 49th St. in Hialeah won the honor again in 2009 and 2010.
And those TV promos?
Priceless.
Long before “American Idol” and “America’s Got Talent” became national TV hits, Machado’s marketing savvy sparked with “Nuestros Talentos,” a weekly, locally produced talent show that was televised from his dealership in the early 1980s.
“In 1982, I started to do my own commercials. I was supposed to spend only $200 in advertising per each new car, but instead spent double,” Machado told the Miami News in 1987. “I went wild. But everyone knew I was here.”
Philanthropy
The success of his Hialeah dealership would make Machado a wealthy man and foster a strong commitment to philanthropy.
“Gus Machado was a Hialeah titan and his philanthropy is legendary and has helped so many charitable organizations,” Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo said on Twitter.
Among his philanthropic endeavors, in 1998, Machado founded the Gus Machado Classic Charity Golf Tournament to benefit the American Cancer Society, which has raised more than a million dollars. The Gus Machado Senior PGA Classic at Key Biscayne benefited the American Cancer Society and United Way.
In 2008, Machado and his wife, Lilliam, created the Gus Machado Family Foundation to benefit several charitable community organizations. Among those to receive donations: Mercy Hospital, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Florida International University, The Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis, American Diabetes Association and the Hialeah Chamber of Commerce.
Four years later, in 2012, Ford presented Machado with its Salute to Dealers Award, the company’s premier community service award. Machado was the only South Florida dealer to receive the honor and one of only six globally.
In 2015, Machado’s $5 million donation to St. Thomas University to establish a business school in his name was the largest single-gift donation in the history of the Miami Gardens Catholic school.
“The passing of Gus Machado has been devastating to us here at St. Thomas University,” President David A. Armstrong told the Miami Herald.
“Gus and Lilliam became one of the most important philanthropic supporters of STU with the founding gift for the Gus Machado College of Business building. Just like the Machados, that building is iconic for St. Thomas University.” Armstrong said.
“Gus Machado is the epitome of what the American Dream is all about,’ Armstrong said. “He was a phenomenal example for our students, and all of South Florida, for what one can do in this country if they are willing to dream and work to make that dream a reality. We love Gus and Lilliam. We pray for the repose of Gus’ soul and know that his name will live forever at St. Thomas University.”
The young Machado
At the time of his $5 million gift to St. Thomas, Machado, then 80, told the Miami Herald that his intention was to help young people.
“You’re only here once in this life, and nobody’s going to take anything with them. Once you hit the clock, you’re gone,” Machado said in 2015.
That gift to “young people” was symbolic, in a sense. Machado knew from an early age what he wanted to do.
Machado was born in Caonao, a small town near Cienfuegos, Cuba, on Nov. 14, 1934. He told the Miami News that when he was 11 and taking a walk with his father, Eduardo, he knew what he was going to be as an adult.
Father and son had strolled by the largest General Motors dealership on the island in the mid-1940s. The boy swept his eyes over that gleaming car lot and then looked at his father and vowed: “One day I am going to own all of that.”
His parents determined their son would have an education in the United States. Machado settled in North Carolina in 1949, where he went to Edwards Military Institute and Greenville College.
Married to his first wife at 18, after graduation Machado worked for the Caterpillar Tractor Company in Illinois, then moved to Miami with his family in 1956.
In Miami, he invested in a small Sinclair gas station on 17th Street and Biscayne Boulevard that served a growing Hispanic community and also doubled as a used car lot. Machado gussied up the cars and would often drive one of the cars, with another in tow, to Key West so he could put them on a barge bound for pre-Castro Cuba.
That’s how he got his knack for selling and exporting cars.
But there was another inspiration that would come around this time and complete the Machado business formula. He told PBS he discovered the classic 1950s CBS sitcom, “I Love Lucy” and TV commercials.
“We used to go and watch TV with the neighbors and that’s when we discovered that Ricky Ricardo was like a king here because everybody loved Lucy,” Machado told PBS in 2013. He also noticed the TV commercials that starred Fort Lauderdale Ford dealer Jim Moran.
“Jim Moran was my inspiration,” Machado said in the video. “He did his own commercials. And I said to my wife back in those days, I was going to do that. She laughed.”
Survivors and services
In addition to his wife Lilliam, Machado’s survivors include his children Myra Dewhurst; Rudolph, Lydia and Robert Machado; four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
A memorial Mass will be at noon Monday, May 23, at Church of the Epiphany, 8235 SW 57th Ave., followed by a funeral at 2 p.m. at Caballero Rivero Little Havana, 3344 SW Eighth St.
This story was originally published May 17, 2022 at 6:09 PM.
