Executive Fuels a Passion for Racing : Cypress’ Don Bell Combines Business and Pleasure on Speedway

Don Bell does not believe the old saw that business and pleasure don’t mix. He mixes them all the time and believes both sides of the equation are the better for it.

For business, the 46-year-old Bell is president of the Ducommun Electronics Group of Cypress, an electronics and computer distribution company with 1984 revenues of more than $400 million.

For pleasure, he’s an avid racing driver.

And so this weekend, Bell will shift his base of operations from a spacious office to the cramped cockpit of his Buick-powered Royale coupe for the Times/Nissan Grand Prix of Endurance at Riverside International Raceway.

Although Bell is president of the Ducommun Group, his company does not sponsor the race car--that money comes out of Bell’s own bank account, offset by whatever sponsorship agreements he can hustle on his own.

For the Times/Nissan 600-kilometer road race, Bell’s co-sponsor is AT&T; Information Services’ computer division. Ducommun recently entered into a master distribution agreement with the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. unit and Bell used the pact as a wedge to convince the company to help him foot the $15,000-to-$20,000 cost of running his car in Sunday’s race and the week’s pre-race practice sessions.

Auto racing sponsorships such as AT&T;’s this weekend are far from new, having been around since the dawn of the sport in the 19th Century.

But race cars go much faster now and there are those who question the efficacy of advertising products on what amounts to a 3-by-5-foot billboard that flashes past potential customers at 200 miles an hour.

Bell, though, is not one of the doubters.

“It works,” he said Thursday before leaving his office for testing and practice sessions at the raceway. “The sponsor gets exposure from being associated with the car in pre-race publicity and the race reports in the media. There are all the normal promotions benefits.”

But Bell’s view is not limited to using just the car as a sales tool. He expands the marketing concept to include the entire event, race track and all.

So while the Ducommun Group doesn’t sponsor its president’s car, the company--made up of Kierulff Electronics, Ducommun Data Systems, MTI Systems and Metermaster--participates in Bell’s passion for road racing by hosting race-day parties for its employees and guests--mainly customers and potential customers.

A special hospitality area has been set up at a strategic viewing point along the Riverside track for Sunday’s race.

There, Ducommun will cater to and pamper some 700 guests with food, beverages and souvenirs. The guests also get to meet the team’s drivers and crew and get a close-up look at the race car.

“We make a whole day out for them,” Bell said. “And at the same time, our sales people get to meet the customers in a very relaxed, social situation. We want to make it easy for our customers to see that they can get good products and services from us and also that we are fun to do business with.

“This program also allows us to project an image to potential customers that we are a progressive company. It’s an important point of differentiation of our company in what is an incredibly competitive business world.”

Bell says he began developing this concept several years ago, not long after he graduated from amateur racing into the ranks of professional drivers.

What started as small gatherings of employees and customers now has grown to an extent that “sometimes we have to try to limit how many people we invite,” he said.