16 Oct Bert Ogden’s Robert Vackar Nominated for Time Dealer of the Year

Robert Vackar, chairman of the board and chief performance officer of Bert Ogden Motors in Edinburg, is one of 48 dealers nationwide nominated for the 2027 Time Dealer of the Year award, per a news release from Bert Ogden Auto Group. Time announced the nominations Wednesday.

The nominees come from a field of more than 20,000 dealers, and Vackar was picked to represent the Texas Automobile Dealers Association in the national competition for the 58th annual award. The award is among the industry’s most prestigious, aimed at top-performing dealers who have also served their communities for years.

Vackar said he is honored and proud to represent his employees, customers, family and the Valley. “What began as one family-owned store has grown through the hard work of generations of team members and the enduring support of the communities we serve,” he said in the release.

The nominees will be honored Feb. 19, 2027, at the National Automobile Dealers Association’s 110th annual show in Orlando, Florida. Regional finalists and one national finalist will be announced early next year, per The Monitor.

The nomination takes in both his business results and his giving, including donations to South Texas education in the tens of millions. Much of that has gone to UTRGV. The Vackars gave more than $2 million for endowed scholarships in 2016, then another $15 million that year to the university’s business college, which UTRGV renamed for Vackar. It was the biggest single gift to higher education in the Valley at the time. In 2024, the couple gave $20 million to UTRGV’s new football program, and the university named its stadium the Robert and Janet Vackar Stadium.

Beyond the university, Vackar has held seats on the UTRGV President’s Advisory Board and with the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Texas and Valley automobile dealers associations. Gifts from him and the company have gone to the Boys & Girls Clubs, Catholic Charities, Easterseals Rio Grande Valley, Make-A-Wish, the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley and Palm Valley Animal Society, among others. He also helped launch the Veterans War Memorial of Texas in McAllen, and the company was a founding sponsor of the McAllen Holiday Parade and an early backer of the Renaissance Cancer Research Center at DHR Health.

The company traces back to his father-in-law, Bert Ogden, whose dealership opened in 1972, per The Monitor. Vackar joined in 1983 as sales manager and helped guide its early growth, including buying Randolph Chevrolet in Mission in 1987 and adding franchises in McAllen in 1990. When Bert and Dorothy Ogden died in a 1992 car accident, Vackar stepped in to run the business as its dealer principal.

Today Bert Ogden Auto Group spans roughly 30 dealerships and related operations and employs over 1,200 people, which makes it a top automotive employer in the Valley. Automotive News ranked it No. 38 among the nation’s largest dealership groups in 2026, going by 2025 new-vehicle retail sales. The company has also put more than $10 million into its facilities since 2010.

The company offers employees health coverage, counseling and mental health services, help finding substance abuse treatment, on-site vaccinations and smoke-free facilities. Workers can also get online training, scholarships for themselves and their families, matched charitable donations and employee pricing across the group.

A Gonzales, Texas, native, Vackar was raised in Edinburg, working in his father’s lumber business before college. He earned a business degree at Texas A&M, where he joined the Corps of Cadets, graduating in 1966. After working as a financial analyst for Shell Oil in Houston, he spent 1967 to 1969 in the Army as a first lieutenant, including a 1969 posting in Qui Nhon, Vietnam. In Houston he met Janet Ogden, and the couple, married for 45 years, eventually moved back to the Valley.