Pieter Hogeveen

Director, Alfa Romeo North America

- Gary Witzenburg

Pieter Hogeveen grew up in the Netherlands as a car-loving son of a Citroën dealer. By age 12, he was working at the dealership cleaning garbage cans, later doing oil changes and eventually selling cars. He went to the Netherlands’ IVA Driebergen automotive business school and graduated in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in automotive management.

Then he came stateside to continue his education at Northridge University in Midland, Michigan. “I did my junior and senior studies there in one year and got my bachelor’s of business administration in 2000, then went back to the family business in the Netherlands,” he says.

Hogeveen’s goal was to have a car dealership, and he soon returned to the U.S. at the invitation of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA). “They have a dealership management training program in McLean, Virginia—they accept one foreign student each year, and they asked if I was interested,” Hogeveen says. “So I went there for a year while also working at a Volvo-Subaru dealership in Annapolis, Maryland. And that’s when I fell in love with America. I said, ‘Wow this is a great country!’ I liked how fast-paced it is. And people don’t just order cars here; they buy $70,000 cars and pick them up the same day. I thought that was so impressive.”

He completed that program in 2001, but had to go back home when his visa expired. He worked as service manager at his father’s dealership through 2003, then told his dad he was returning to America—this time Detroit. “‘I think there are more people leaving Detroit now than going there,’ he said, and I said ‘That sounds like an opportunity.’”