Founder & President Conyers-Riverside Ford, Inc. – Detroit, Michigan
Nathan G. Conyers lives in Detroit where he was raised and educated. Through the 1960s, Mr. Conyers pursued a legal career, both in private practice and as an attorney for the Small Business Administration, the Veteran’s Administration, and as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the State of Michigan. In 1970, Mr. Conyers established Conyers Ford (later renamed Conyers-Riverside Ford) which remains the only African American owned auto dealership within the city of Detroit. During the years since, the Conyers-Riverside Ford dealership has prospered and Mr. Conyers, who is often referred to as the “Dean of America’s Black-owned Automobile Dealerships”, has helped more than two dozen other African Americans to become owners of their own dealerships. Mr. Conyers has been recognized for business excellence and community service by the Howard University School of Business and Public Administration, by former President Jimmy Carter, and with the keys to the cities of Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and Detroit. In 1996, Ford Motor Company Chairman Alex Trotman presented Conyers-Riverside Ford with the prestigious “25 Year award”. The dealership is one of only five businesses to have been listed on Black Enterprise magazine’s list of top 100 Black Businesses since the listing was created more than twenty years ago. The magazine named Conyers-Riverside Ford their “Dealership of the Year” in 1995 and recently featured Nathan Conyers as a “Marathon Man” for his long and successful career. In 1998, the dealership was awarded the N.A.C.E. (North American Customer Excellence Award) for excellence in customer service and satisfaction. And in 1999, Mr. Conyers was honored as a recipient of Time magazine’s “Quality Dealer Award” which was given to the best 63 dealers out of 21,000 dealers nationwide. Also in 1999, Mr. Conyers was awarded a Jaguar Motorcar franchise, only the second Black-owned franchise in Jaguar history.
