Longtime automobile dealer Mike Steven dies: ‘Something’s missing around here’

For most of last week, there was a table reserved at the Candle Club for someone who would not be coming to use it.

That’s because longtime regular Mike Steven — one of only two people who had his name embroidered on a Candle chair — died Wednesday at age 80. In his honor, the club didn’t seat anyone at the table, which had a sign with his name on it, an unlit cigarette in an ashtray and his favorite Ten High bourbon with a splash of water.

“Well, that was his spot,” said Brandon Steven, his third cousin. “He was there a lot. Most of his business was done there.”

Through the years, Brandon Steven purchased a number of automobile dealerships from Mike Steven, including his father’s Eddy’s Toyota of Wichita, and the Candle Club is where they would negotiate.

“Mike will negotiate tooth and nail on every deal,” Brandon Steven said. “He’s going to count the staples in the stapler.”

However, he added, “In business, I learned this from Mike . . . and I say it all the time, a fair deal is a good deal for you and a good deal for me.”

As tough of a negotiator as he could be, Brandon Steven said his cousin “was one of the most generous people” in his personal life.

“You were not going to pay for a drink or meal if Mike was there.”

Retired car dealer Dawson Grimsley of Davis-Moore Auto Group said Mike Steven “always tried to buy me a set of golf clubs because he wanted me to go take off and play golf instead of competing against him.”

They didn’t always agree, like when a 17-year-old Grimsley pinstriped a car for Steven and “he kind of raised hell for how much I charged him.”

The two later did much bigger business together.

“Mike had his friends and foes, but when Mike told you something, you could put it in the bank,” Grimsley said. “I bought a Chrysler store from him back in the day on a handshake.”

Parks Motors owner John Culver said when he bought his dealership in 1990, Steven reached out to offer support.

“There was nobody that was greater fun or had better stories after hours,” Culver said. “His stories would hold you at the bar well past quittin’ time.”

Most of those stories are the types that probably shouldn’t be shared in an obituary or a family newspaper.

“Well, no, I’m going to have to draw the line there,” Culver said.

There was another side of Steven as well. Culver said when his daughter worked at the First Place, she always said, “Mike was just the most genteel gentleman to walk through the door.”

In business, Culver said Steven “was always kind of avant-garde” with the “freshest ideas on the block. Now, they didn’t always work, but they were certainly novel ideas.”

That includes leasing cars from a space at the mall, considering taking his small dealership public when no others were doing so and selling motorized bikes long before they became popular.

“This guy was about a mile ahead of everybody else,” Culver said.

In the Wichita automobile community, he said, Steven was “about the last of the old guard.”

Candle Club managing partner Judah Craig said Steven liked the club because he could smoke there and it has “the old-school feel.” The club even kept Vegas-style glasses — a taller, thinner version of a traditional cocktail glass — for Steven.

His table was the first one past the hostess stand “so he could kind of see the whole room,” Craig said.

After the death of Midwest Corporate Aviation owner Marvin Autry — the only other Candle member with the special embroidered chair — the club honored him by keeping a photo of Autry in front of his favorite plane. Craig said he’ll do something similar for Steven.

Still, he said, “It’s definitely going to feel like something’s missing around here.”