Guests at the 16th annual Agent Summit and the co-located Ethical F&I Managers Conference recently joined family, friends and supporters to honor the third class of inductees to the F&I Hall of Fame. 

The ceremony, which included an inductee panel discussion and speeches by or on behalf of each honoree, took place at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. 

The class of 2026 includes the late Jerry Lacour, co-founder and vice chairman of Innovative Aftermarket Systems (IAS); Mickey Quinn, president of the Spectrum Dealer Alliance; Gil Van Over III, founder of gvo3 & Associates, co-founder and executive director of ACE and co-founder of AuditF&I; and Tony Wanderon, chairman and CEO of APCO Holdings and founder of Family First Dealer Services. 

David Gesualdo, president of Bobit Business Media’s Dealer Group and chairman of the F&I Hall of Fame selection committee, said he believes this year’s induction and discussion were the liveliest in the hall’s brief history.

“The excitement was palpable, and the reason is clear: These four gentlemen have dedicated their lives and careers to making F&I the engine that powers America’s auto retail and finance industry,” Gesualdo said. “They have joined a highly exclusive club of true industry titans, each of whom succeeded by doing business the right way for a long time.” 

Jim Ganther, CEO of Mosaic Compliance Services and a member of the selection committee, served as master of ceremonies. In his opening remarks, he noted that the hall of famers of the past and present classes effectively built an industry from scratch. 

“As we celebrate the careers and accomplishments of this year’s honorees, we are reminded that F&I, an industry within an industry, was not always here. It did not spring up full-grown but became what it is because of people like this.

“From modest beginnings, with credit life and disability, to service contracts and GAP, bundled ancillary products and reinsurance, these are the people who made F&I what it is today.”

Jerry Lacour

Gerald “Jerry” Lacour is the F&I Hall of Fame’s second posthumous inductee after Larry Pomarico of Acrisure and SouthWest Dealer Services, a 2025 addition to the hall. 

In 1984 Lacour co-founded with son Garret company IAS after surviving the “Wild West” of F&I’s first few decades. The founding followed a successful career in retail and as an independent general agent. Having been let down by a series of providers, Garret says, Jerry was determined to “deliver what we promise.”

Those who knew and worked with Jerry Lacour say he was a true pioneer, an amiable and honest but hard-charging agent and executive who not only conceived and developed products but had an innate ability to bring them to market, often in collaboration with both new and established partners. 

He also had a big heart. Lacour donated millions of dollars to various charities and churches and personally volunteered his time to support the many causes that were dear to him. In 2005, he and his family took in survivors and pets displaced by Hurricane Katrina at his sprawling Austin, Texas, estate. 

Lacour was represented by longtime friends and colleagues Jeff Breckenridge and Jeff Jagoe, both of whom are senior executives with RoadVantage, the company Garret Lacour started in 2011.

“At a time when credit life dominated F&I, Jerry saw far beyond the present and recognized the potential for a broader, more valuable suite of protection products,” Breckenridge said. “From 1984 until the sale of IAS in 2008, he and Garret built one of the most respected and influential companies in the business. 

“Jerry approached the industry with relentless energy and creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit that pushed boundaries. He wasn’t afraid to take risks. That mindset led to early innovations in products like tire-and-wheel and dent-and-ding protection, helping shape categories that are now standard in dealerships today.”

Jagoe added, “It’s an incredible honor to accept this induction into the Hall of Fame for our dear friend and mentor, Jerry Lacour, whom we both knew and worked with for 30 years. Jerry wasn’t just a pioneer. He was a force of a human being. … But what made Jerry really special is not just what he built. It’s really how he did it. He was strong-willed, endlessly creative. And he was a man of integrity.”

Mickey Quinn

Quinn was born in Ireland and lists his mother, Ita, and the Gaelic football club he played for, Clonoe O’Rahilly’s, among the early influences that would shape his life and career. At home and on the pitch, he learned the value of tenacity, resilience and fairness. 

But Quinn has been “very fortunate,” he said, to have had a series of mentors that includes Vanguard Dealer Services founder James “Jim” Polley and colleagues Ed Rietz, Mike Seergy, Rob Howarth and John Hammer, among many others, he stressed, and “incredibly lucky” to have enjoyed the love and support of his wife, Carmel, for 34 years. 

“And I got into the car business 35 years ago. And on the very first day in there, I knew I’d found home,” he says. “And I hear the guys talking about retiring. You will never hear me say those words. Because I’m here for good. These guys are going to have to deal with me forever. 

“But for me, The car business has always been about the people. I could care less about cars, to be quite honest with you. They get me back and forth to where I have to go. It’s the people that I got to meet on this 35-year journey.”

Quinn said he couldn’t have anticipated at the outset of his F&I career that he would be part of an industry and company that has grown so rapidly over the course of his tenure. He said he has never lost his passion for the business, due in no small part to the “hundreds” of colleagues and competitors he feels are just as deserving of a place in the F&I Hall of Fame as he. 

“Every day going into that office is a joy for me,” he said. “Every day, even on the bad days, even on a late Friday when there’s a $25,000 claim that we’ve got to take care of. I still love this business.”

Asked how he wanted to be remembered by the industry he has long served, Quinn replied, “Tough, but fair. Always fair and always tough.”

Gil Van Over III

Like many of his fellow F&I Hall of Fame members, Van Over is more than an effective executive. He is also an inventor. 

“It is no stretch to say that Gil invented forensic F&I audits as a stand-alone business,” Ganther says. “In so doing, he promoted the necessity of inspecting what you’re expecting to where it has become the norm. We see great advances in automatic, AI-enabled audit functions today. But we must never forget that what these things automate Gil pioneered.”

Like Ganther, Van Over’s name is synonymous with compliance, a pursuit that large swaths of the industry once regarded as a nuisance and an impediment to dealership success. Today, thanks to Van Over and many others, F&I and compliance are now one and the same. 

Through his work at gvo3 & Associates, ACE and AuditF&I and his regular contributions to “F&I and Showroom” and “Agent Entrepreneur” magazines, among other outlets, Van Over has remained committed to protecting dealers and the customers they serve from the mistakes, oversights and occasional bad behavior that give the industry a bad name. 

“I’ve worked closely with Gil for over 20 years and can attest that he cannot be bought,” Ganther said. “Dealership personnel regularly cajole, threaten and browbeat Gil to overlook uncomfortable facts or increase scores where they are not merited. Gil never blinks.”

For his part, Van Over says he was “shocked” to get the call informing him he was a member of the Hall of Fame class of 2026. He is quick to credit others for his success, starting with Forbes Todd Automotive Group CEO Tom McCollum, whom he met when both worked for Aon and would inspire Van Over to develop auditing and compliance processes that live on, in some form, to this day. 

Van Over also lists Ganther, his ACE and AuditF&I co-founder, former Association of Finance & Insurance Professionals chief David Robertson and attorneys Tom Hudson of Hudson Cook and Terry O’Loughlin of Reynolds and Reynolds among his inspirations and legal resources. 

“Some of the previous honorees before me were really mentors that helped guide the way for me and my company and get the business to where we’re at today,” Van Over said. “And of course, Phyllis, my beautiful bride of nearly half a century, and my kids. Thank you for supporting me through this adventure.”

Tony Wanderon

Wanderon’s long and impactful F&I career includes stops at Allstate Dealer Services, Family First Dealer Services — which he founded in partnership with his sister, Courtney Hoffman — and his current home at APCO Holdings. 

As Ganther pointed out, National Auto Care acquired Family First in 2013. Then APCO acquired NAC in 2023. 

“And in each transaction, Tony wound up running the acquiring company, suggesting these companies were not so much acquiring a business as Tony and his leadership team.”

Long known as the “godfather of GAP,” Wanderon helped pioneer that now-core F&I product — along with trade-in protection — offsetting the slow decline of credit life and disability insurance that began in the late 1980s. 

Protecting car buyers from financial catastrophe is a noble cause. But Wanderon is more likely to point to his creation of and fundraising for the F&I Providers Relief Fund in 2020, when the Covid pandemic closed dealerships across the country for several months, robbing F&I professionals of their livelihoods. 

“And we raised almost a million dollars in five days,” he said. “So if anybody says we don’t care, slap them in the face and say we do. Because this is a great group of people in a great industry.” 

Wanderon credits his success to his wife of 40 years, Christine, and his many mentors, partners and teammates for supporting and shaping his career and his personal vision of leadership and service. 

“I’ve always believed that F&I is about more than products or performance. It’s about trust. At the end of the day, we’re in a position to help customers protect themselves and make confident decisions, and that responsibility should never be taken lightly,” he said.

“Any success I’ve had is a direct reflection of the teams I’ve been fortunate to work with. I share this recognition with them, because nothing meaningful in this business is ever built alone.”

In closing, Wanderon added, “Thank you for this honor — it means a great deal.”