Meet Certified Pre-Owned Manager Joe Manzi, a Fairfield native who has seemingly already done it all in the car business. From an early age, Joe wanted to be a mechanic, satisfying his gearhead urges by collecting broken dirt bikes so he could fix them up to ride. He started his career during a work study program while still at Bullard Havens Technical High School with a little-used car dealership, where he also learned sales, and worked his way up and up through larger dealerships until finding himself passing his tenth anniversary as a sales manager in 2020.

“We had people buying cars like crazy that year,” he told us. “And then all the sudden inventory was hard to come by. I bought a lot of pre-owned cars from BMW of Bridgeport because there’s a person for everything out there, but it’s about quality more than anything else.” When the former pre-owned manager in Bridgeport was set to retire, Joe became the obvious choice, and was hired to his current role in October of 2021.

“You learn everything this way, working on a car, financing, reconditioning it to make the best for sale,” he says. “The opportunity to grow, improve, to be plugged into an oversight position and be set up for success, it all comes from the team they’ve created here in Bridgeport.”

When he’s not at work, Joe is the original homebody family man with his girlfriend, three stepchildren, and a pair of French bulldogs he calls his best friends. It’s great to have him onboard.