Reasoning that other dealers had the same parts and roughly the same prices to offer, he believed service and hustle were his aces. "A lot of people go through the motions with little sense of urgency; I had an extreme level of urgency," he says. "A body shop would call and want 21 parts; I'd pull, pick and price them in 15 or 20 minutes. If I can find only 19 parts, I'm ticked off. If I'm five minutes late, I'm upset because I created a system that wasn't more responsive."

Miller wasn't just good at delivering service and parts; he was world-class. He wanted parts delivered five minutes ago. He was a quarterback, running the two-minute offense. His store became the highest volume Toyota parts dealer in the nation. Miller eventually became operations manager over five car dealerships. "If you had asked me then what I would be doing in the next five or 10 years, I'd still be working in Denver dealerships," he says. "I had no aspirations to have my own deal. I was perfectly content."

Cussing, softball , tithing

In Miller's mind, any discussion of what happened next and his subsequent meteoric rise in the business world must include his religious faith. Early in his married life he strayed from his Mormon roots. His re-conversion to the church was a seven-year process, culminated by a late-night meeting in which he told his local church leader there were three sticking points: a weakness for swearing, playing softball on Sunday and paying tithing (donating 10 percent of his earnings to the church). He vowed to change. The next day he told Gail, "Starting with the next paycheck, pay 10 percent tithing on my gross earnings, and I don't want you ever to ask me about it again."

Six weeks later, Miller was summoned to a meeting with the owner of the dealership. He wanted to reassign Miller elsewhere in the company so the owner could take over the car dealership operation and work with his eight sons.

This was what he got for paying his tithing?

Miller decided to leave the company. He moved back to Salt Lake City and bought his first car dealership, drawing up the contract on a place mat in a restaurant. That day he came home and told Gail, "I just spent a million dollars." He had spent their entire savings, $88,000, as a down payment.

"I don't think anything scared me as much as that first dealership," says Gail.

The Millers endured hard times when the economy turned sour in the early '80s. "There were times when Larry would come home and say, 'Sorry, we didn't make any money this month.' We didn't have enough to pay our bills," says Gail.