Pablo Sandoval pulled up to a custom car shop on a recent Friday afternoon hoping to do some business. He wanted to trade in the Porsche Panamera he was driving, order new rims for his two Range Rovers, pick up the gray one that was being worked on and discuss the next car he would buy: a 2016 Rolls-Royce Ghost.
Sandoval strolled inside and, seeing no one at the front desk, leaned on the counter and playfully smacked the bell several times. The owner, a Miami native named Alex Vega, suddenly emerged, smiling, with a phone pinned to his ear. Vega hugged Sandoval; kissed Sandoval’s girlfriend, Yulimar Martins, on the cheek; and invited them to his office to talk.
“Spring training is when business gets the craziest, because everybody wants to show up with something new,” Vega said. “I’m already getting calls. I’m already preparing cars.”
For many baseball players, visiting Vega appears to be an annual offseason pilgrimage. Vega owns the Auto Firm, a garage that customizes cars about 17 miles from South Beach. Vega helps players acquire luxury cars that cost as much as a small home, and he claims to have more than 300 baseball clients, from the game’s wealthiest stars to little-known minor leaguers.
Before Sandoval arrived that day, Vega walked around the garage, pointing out cars and their owners. There was the white Ferrari that Hanley Ramirez was intending to give his wife as a gift. There was Jorge Soler’s Jeep, which looked like a tank, and next to it was Starling Marte’s Jeep, which would soon look the same. There was Brock Holt’s own bulky sport utility vehicle.
Out front was one of Vega’s fastest-selling vehicles, a custom Mercedes limousine van. This one belonged to Yoan Moncada, a top prospect of the Boston Red Sox. Vega said he had sold the same model to Juan Uribe, Yoenis Cespedes, Ramirez, Ivan Nova and Starlin Castro.
The back of the limousine features a bar on one side, two reclining chairs, a wraparound leather couch, two big-screen televisions and a home theater system. It seats seven people comfortably, costs about $175,000 and is meant to host a party on the go.
“It’s like you’re in a hotel room,” Vega said, giving a version of his sales pitch. “They can smoke tobacco, the cigars. They can drink, they can party with their friends, and nobody knows they’re in there.”
Vega planned to show off the limousine as long as he had it there — with baseball players continually popping in, he figured that some of them would be interested. His best clients own at least several cars, and they trade them in and buy new ones frequently, or at about the same pace that one might buy new shoes.
When Sandoval and his girlfriend drove off in their gray Range Rover, they left behind the Porsche they had arrived in so that Vega could sell it. Sandoval had bought and customized the car two years before. The odometer read 15,563 miles. Inside, Sandoval left three CDs in the stereo, $3.26 of change in a cup holder and a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.
American success story
The front room of the Auto Firm is decorated with signed jerseys from baseball clients like Cespedes, Jose Abreu and Nelson Cruz, with some of the jerseys including messages addressed to Vega.
Inside Vega’s back office there is more memorabilia, and on one wall he has hung posters from the movie “Scarface,” superimposing his own face onto the body of Tony Montana, the fictional drug kingpin played by Al Pacino.
“It’s just because everybody says I rule Miami,” Vega said, smiling. “It’s the best movie ever made.”
The son of Cuban immigrants, Vega, 41, was born and raised in the Miami area. His love of cars started when he watched his father work as a Firestone salesman. Vega hoped that a customer would someday bring in a car as cool as the ones he saw on television — the Ford Gran Torino from “Starsky & Hutch,” the General Lee from “The Dukes of Hazzard” or the talking car from “Knight Rider.”
During his last year of high school, Vega got a job at Firestone, too, changing tires. Soon, he was promoted to a sales job. In his late 20s, he opened his first custom car shop, and for about the next 15 years, he built his client base among Miami’s wealthy elite.
Naturally, that included athletes. His first baseball client was Alfonso Soriano, in 2005. An agent called on Soriano’s behalf. Soriano had seen a Hummer that Vega had personalized for the rapper Rick Ross and wanted one like it.
“Once you do that car and they take it to the field, the other players see it,” Vega said. “They’re like, ‘Who did your car?’ And then word of mouth started spreading.”
That is how Vega typically gets new clients: An agent, financial planner or athlete refers him to more athletes. When Cespedes defected from Cuba, his financial adviser introduced him to Vega, who sold Cespedes a Mercedes. Sandoval met Vega through his agent in 2009, when he was establishing himself in the majors.
“It’s like a sign when you get to the big leagues,” Sandoval said. “The first thing you want to get is a nice car to drive around. Every year, I try to get a new one.”
One car turns into two, or three or four. Eventually, Vega starts attending his clients’ games, going to dinner with them, hanging out at their homes. The relationship grows to the point that the player can buy a car from him using FaceTime, and Vega knows the player’s tastes well enough that he can customize the car without poring over details.
“We are like family; he treats everyone like that,” Sandoval said. “I always let Alex pick my cars. I give him a budget, and he always does it.”
Not surprisingly, Vega has become something of a celebrity himself. His Instagram account has 425,000 followers. The logo for his brand Avorza (a blending of his initials and the Italian word forza, which means force) appears in music videos. When a celebrity guest is not hanging around the garage, Vega is often on his phone, taking calls for new cars and clients.
A variety of stars
One recent afternoon while Vega was picking at a piece of chicken from Pollo Tropical, he received a call from a local lawyer who wanted to refer a new client, a hockey player.
“Great, I need some hockey players,” Vega said, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear, continuing to eat his lunch. “Who is it? Alex Ovechkin. A Russian?”
Vega shrugged. He did not recognize the name. “Did you show him my page?” he asked.
On the day after Sandoval visited, Chad Johnson, the former NFL wide receiver who was once known as Chad Ochocinco, stopped by to see his next car: a sleek, customized black Smart car. Johnson felt so at home that he smoked a cigar and pumped music throughout the garage, checking the quality of the car’s sound system.
Johnson had met Vega around 2007 on the set of a Lil Wayne music video on South Beach. Vega had customized a Rolls-Royce for Lil Wayne. Johnson wanted Vega to do his cars, too.
“He does good work — great work,” Johnson said over the music. “It’s very detailed. There will be places you can go where you get a great deal, but the work isn’t quality, you know?”
After playing music for several minutes, Johnson decided he wanted to take a test drive. Vega warned him not to go onto a busy street; the car did not have a license plate or the proper tags. But Johnson peeled out of the lot, with the tires screeching on the pavement.
Was he coming back? “With him,” Vega said, “you never know.”
When Johnson returned about 15 minutes later, Vega asked him to pose for pictures with the car. TMZ had been hounding Vega for the last day and a half for an exclusive picture. Johnson leaned against the car, and Vega stood next to him, flashing a peace sign.
Compared with the other cars Vega works on, this one was relatively tame. Vega once put a makeshift recording studio in a car for the singer Akon, a good friend. But Vega claims that his baseball clients are the ones who ask for his most flamboyant creations.
After Cespedes became a star, he bought a Lamborghini Aventador, a car that Vega estimated cost $400,000. Then Cespedes asked for $75,000 in renovations. Cespedes wanted the car painted satin black with metallic blue accents. He wanted an entirely redone interior, a custom wheel design, and exhaust piping that would spit fire.
“It was like if you got a Lamborghini and rebuilt it all over again,” Vega said. “There are other players that have Aventadors. When the players are in the parking lot, you can probably see three Aventadors because they all can afford them. He said, ‘If I’m going to do something, I want something no one has ever had.’”
Still, if a player comes up with a creative idea, others will usually copy it. Uribe once asked for an inordinate number of speakers in the trunk of a Jeep — and started a trend, Vega said.
“So I did that,” Vega said. “I put more speakers than I had ever done behind that Jeep. And I’m thinking, a Jeep? Why would you do that to a Jeep? But he asked for it, I
did it, and it became a success, because there were five or six players asking for the same thing. You have pretty much a live DJ wherever you go.”
Some of Vega’s clients seem more competitive about their car collections than their playing statistics, which is why they want to show up to spring training with something new and flashy. When Uribe and Ramirez were teammates with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Vega said, they engaged in a feud in which they kept sending exotic cars to Vega, trying to one-up each other.
“They did it literally to mess with each other,” Vega said.
Uribe tried ending it by buying a Mercedes limousine van, the one that cost $175,000. He posted an Instagram video of himself sitting in one of the reclining chairs, a cigar in his hand, broadcasting a message for Ramirez in Spanish. The gist of it: Top this.
And, Vega added, “Hanley came right away and bought a van.”
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