He doesn't sell cars, he sells Porsches … and a lot of them 

SALT LAKE CITY — For going on 40 years, he has held court, the last 33 of them here on South State Street, a legend in his own time and of his own making, a salesman nonpareil who, according to Michael Baich, the longtime sales manager at Porsche of Salt Lake, "has got to be top five in the world, if not higher."

Meet Z.A. Konarski, a Polish immigrant who sells German luxury cars in America.

The story of how he got here is as inimitable as how he became a superstar at selling Porsches.

Z.A. — he prefers using his initials because "Zbigniew is not easy to repeat for Americans" — came to the United States in 1984. He was fleeing the iron grasp of communism.

Born in Poland in 1948, he grew up watching the Soviet Union increasingly restrict freedoms in his homeland. In protest, he helped set up what became the Solidarity movement when he was in his 20s, becoming, in the process, an enemy of the state. Seeing dark clouds ahead, for himself and his country, he left on a travel visa in 1980, knowing if he returned he'd either be denied entry or thrown in jail. (The next year, Poland was put under martial law.)

Z.A.'s wife, Margaret Konarski — who he'd sent out of Poland ahead of him, along with their son — preceded him to Utah. A family relative, a physician, had been sponsored by doctors and nurses at Holy Cross Hospital to come to America. He gave Salt Lake City high marks as a nice place to live, prompting Margaret Konarski to move here from New York City. Meanwhile, her husband was stuck in Austria, negotiating miles of red tape trying to gain asylum so he could come and join her.

It took four years, and a yeoman effort from Sen. Jake Garn, but by 1984, Z.A. was able to fly from Vienna to Salt Lake City and start his new life.

Z.A. had a master's degree in mining, which landed him a job at the Utah Department of Transportation as a surveyor. He hated it. "I found it to be very unrewarding working for the state," is how he puts it. "It was not what I came to America for." After nine months, he quit.

Now he was free to turn to his true independent, entrepreneurial nature — and start selling automobiles.

His first job was with a Porsche dealership in Provo, followed by a few years in Ogden, then a year in California at Hermosa Beach, where he might have stayed if Margaret Konarski had wanted to move, but she didn't. So in 1992, he returned to Utah and started working for what was then Strong Porsche and is now Porsche Salt Lake City.

He was hired on the spot. His reputation as a salesman had preceded him.

Then he started exceeding it.

"I don't sell cars, I sell Porsches."

That's Z.A., making an important distinction.

"When I was starting in the car business and quitting Department of Transportation, most people thought I am crazy," he reflects. "How could you quit state job to be a car salesman? And I said, 'I'm not going to be car salesman, I'm going to sell Porsches. If it's not Porsche, I'm not touching.'

"Porsche is like a drug almost," he continues, "you get addicted to it, you know. I'm not kidding."

Z.A. has had a love affair with Porsches all his life. He used to race them when he was in Poland. When he came to America, he brought one with him — a 911 he'd picked up at the factory.

Talking Porsche to fellow addicts? That's not work, that's therapy.

But the real secret to his success, Z.A. will tell you, isn't just sharing his passion for his product with his customers, it's sharing it with them over and over again.

"You have to run business in a way that people come back," he says.

He opens a drawer in a cabinet in his office to show what he means.

There, in a filing system of his own design, he has records of every Porsche sale he's ever made in Salt Lake, going back more than three decades. Every one. Many of the customers' files, if not the majority, include paperwork for more than one sale. Several customers have bought more than a dozen Porsches. One has bought 60, another 80. The record is 100.

"He's a movie producer. He is the biggest guy. Sometimes he buys six, seven a year," says Z.A. "Then he trades them in."

Z.A. takes care of the people in the drawer, and the people in the drawer take care of him.

"They're not just his customers, they're his friends," says Jeff Sandstrom, a colleague at Porsche Salt Lake City, "they go to dinner together, they socialize. He looks out for deals for them when nobody else would even maybe think about it. He knows what they want before they do."

What he doesn't do is coddle his customers, or promise them the sky.

"I've had several customers over the years say, 'I want you to know that that was the biggest jerk I have ever met in my life, and I enjoyed every minute of it,'" says Mike Baich, chuckling. "He has enough humor woven in there, they're not offended."

Along the way, Z.A. has racked up the kinds of numbers — more than 2,000 clients; more than 6,000 Porches sold — that would put him in the car salesman hall of fame, if there were a car salesman hall of fame.

Porsche has invited him to its factory in Germany on several occasions, and three times honored him as one of its top 100 salesmen in the world.

How long will he keep going? He'll be 77 in October, but he doesn't work as many hours as he used to and he makes his own schedule. He goes back to visit family in Poland at least once a year.

He says he is grooming a replacement.

"I have a person, a young guy who is very passionate about Porsche, and I am introducing him already to my clients. So when I am on vacation and somebody comes here, he is helping them."

Still, the consensus is there is only one Z.A. He is basically un-cloneable. Sums up Mike Baich, who was there 33 years ago the day Z.A. was hired: "He's just a unique personality who is very, very good at what he does. To quote Mel Brooks, 'or you got it or you don't.' I know you're not supposed to start a sentence with or, but 'or you got it or you don't.' And he's got it."

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