When looking for a car to purchase, one typically considers factors such as price, efficiency, size, and so on.
But for Alan Mindel and his new business venture, one factor to consider is the feeling of luxury.
Great Neck’s Champion Maserati is a premier luxury automotive dealership and recently witnessed a new leadership shift with the hotel owner and planning board member for the Incorporated Village of Lake Success, Alan Mindel, becoming a partner along with his siblings.
“We’re just starting the car business, but what we bring to is the fact that we believe the customer is the most important thing, whether that’s the internal customer, that’s our employee or the external customer that’s buying a service in their car,” said Mindel. “We believe that’s the key to everything. It’s the customer.”
Mindel, as well as his brother and sister, are coming into the Maserati family as partners under unique circumstances, with the family only having experience in the hotel business. They several hotels across New York including the Inn at Great Neck, Four Points By Sheraton- Melville, Viana Hotel and Spa, Adria Hotel and Conference Center and Best Western Queens Gold Coast. All of these hotels are under Samar Hospitality, a family-owned hospitality business. Mindel’s new journey in the world of luxury automobiles started around the beginning of May with the acquisition of the Great Neck property under its principal owner, John Ficaro.
Ficaro has been in the position of dealership owner and a friend of Mindel’s brother, Joseph Mindel, for 20 years, and it was through that friendly connection and long track record in the automobile business that brought the Mindel family into the business. The establishment’s day-to-day handling of customers will be under Ficaro, the “captain of the ship,” as Mindel put it. As for the new partners, they will assume a more behind-the-scenes position, more focused on the business side, to leave time to continue maintaining their hotels.
“It was a unique opportunity,” said Mindel. “There was value in the acquisition, and we believe in John’s track record of running dealerships. He was the owner of South Shore Porsche for almost 20 years, and…he has a very long history of being very successful. So we believe in that.”
Now that the new dealership is settled after its initial adjustments and deferred maintenance fixes, it has begun its drive toward the future with its upcoming GranTurismo Experience Event on July 26, 2025. The event to be held in the Great Neck location’s showroom is to debut the 2025 Maserati GranTurismo, with the opportunity for attendees to be able to test drive one of the around five 2025/2024 models on display.
The car show comes via the dealership, garnering the car model in bulk at a lower cost, better warranty, and with 5,000 or fewer miles according to Mindel. The cars came through a one-year lease program by Maserati, where the company leased a certain number of these vehicles for 12 months. Upon the lease’s ending, the Great Neck location bought some of the higher-quality vehicles that were returned.
“We thought that was a unique opportunity where someone in the $100-grand range [has] the ability to buy a $200,000 car with a better warranty,” said Mindel. “And so we thought it was worth showcasing the vehicle, and since we’re a new business, we thought it was important to showcase…the dealership itself.”
The Maserati GranTurismo initially was discontinued in 2019; however, the car model’s grand return debuted in 2024 and is now back in production this year, with this upcoming event being one of the first public reintroductions of this car.
The event will run from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. at 732 Northern Blvd, Great Neck, with light hors d’oeuvres and beverages catered from Mindel’s Inn at Great Neck.
