Mel Farr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Melvin Farr (born November 3, 1944 in Beaumont, Texas) is a former American football player.
As a youth, Farr played football, baseball, track and basketball. He earned a chance to play football for UCLA, and was an All-American at the school from 1963 to 1967. In 1967, Farr joined the Detroit Lions, and won the year's NFL Rookie of the Year Award. He spent his entire injury-plagued career with the Lions, and earned trips to the Pro Bowl in 1967 and 1970.
Farr and his teammate Lem Barney also sang background vocals on the 1971 Marvin Gaye song "What's Going On". After his retirement from pro football, Farr entered the business world, and in 1975 opened the Mel Farr Ford automobile dealership in Oak Park, Michigan. By aggressively targeting the mostly black, poverty stricken, automobile-hungry population of inner city Detroit, he built an auto empire. By 1998, the Mel Farr Auto Group grossed $596.6 million, making it the top African-American business in the United States and the thirty-third largest auto dealership in the US. For many years Farr appeared in his dealerships' commercials in a superhero costume flying through the sky as he was dubbed "Mel Farr, your Superstar dealer".
Farr is part of a family full of professional football players. He is the younger brother of former AFL and NFL player Miller Farr as well as the father of former NFL players Mel Farr, Jr. and Mike Farr.
