A family’s four decades in the car business inspired an animated take on dealership life
If you have spent enough time in a car dealership, you already know that some of the funniest stories never make it outside the dealership walls. The customer who says one thing and does another, the salesperson with a very particular way of doing things, the manager who always seems to have an answer, and the strange situations that somehow become completely normal when you work in the car business. For Ted Striegnitz and Russell Dreher, those experiences became the foundation for Barky’s Auto, an animated series about life inside a used-car dealership, populated, appropriately, by dogs.
For Striegnitz, executive producer and co-creator of Barky’s, the show is also something more personal. His parents owned and operated Mark’s Auto Sales in the Denver metro area for nearly 40 years, giving Striegnitz a front-row seat to the personalities, frustrations and absurdities that come with running a used-car dealership. The family business eventually came to an end following the illnesses and passing of both of his parents. Barky’s Auto became a way to bring some of those memories back to life.
“Barky’s is a tribute to their memory,” Striegnitz said, describing the show as a chance to relive some of the funniest things the family encountered during decades in the car business.
That history is directly reflected in one of the show's characters. Mr. Bark, the fictional dealership owner, was inspired by Striegnitz's father, Mark. The rest of the characters aren't intended to represent specific individuals. Instead, Striegnitz said, they are an amalgamation of the hundreds of people who worked at Mark's Auto over the years. The storylines work in much the same way, combining real experiences from the dealership with ideas generated by the show's creative team.
That gives Barky’s Auto a perspective that is difficult to manufacture. The creators aren't outsiders looking at dealership culture and trying to figure out what is funny. They have lived it. They know the language, the personalities and the situations that can seem completely ordinary to someone who works in a dealership but ridiculous to anyone else.
“Anyone that’s worked in a dealership knows that the car business is a funny industry,” Striegnitz said.
The idea for turning those experiences into an animated show came together when Dreher, a video editor with more than 20 years of experience, began experimenting with with Google's AI Flow and created a sample showing what he could do with the technology.
Striegnitz saw the sample and immediately saw another possibility. He had already wanted to create an animated show about a used-car dealership, although he hadn't decided what kind of characters would populate it. Dogs, cats, horses and other possibilities were considered. Dreher created a one-minute sample featuring dogs as the dealership salespeople. When Striegnitz saw it, the decision was made.
“It’s got to be dogs,” he said.
From there, Barky’s Auto became a much larger creative project. The production starts with an idea, which can come from anyone on the team. Head writer Stephen Lanza develops the idea into a script, and the group then gets together for a script reading. Everyone weighs in on the story and the humor before the script is finalized. For Striegnitz, those readings have become one of his favorite parts of making the show — and perhaps one of the few business meetings where everyone is expected to make the meeting funnier.
Once the script is ready, Dreher takes over the animation. While AI has made Barky’s possible on a relatively small budget, the creators have deliberately kept people at the center of the process. The show uses a team of professional voice actors, whose performances are later processed to give each character its distinctive voice. Dreher said the human performances bring a level of timing, expression and nuance that AI-generated voices still struggle to provide.
The creators aren't trying to make fun of the automotive industry from the outside. Several people involved with Barky’s have automotive experience, including time working at Mark's Auto Sales. The show makes fun of the industry, but the creators don't see themselves as making fun of the people who work in it. Striegnitz said the show is intended to both “humanize and humorize” the car business.
Instead of trying to explain dealership culture to outsiders, Barky’s gives the people inside the business something they can recognize and laugh about themselves. The jokes aren't limited to salespeople, either. The creators want people in the front office, back office and service departments to see pieces of their own workplaces in the characters and situations.
The ultimate test, Striegnitz said, would be for viewers to look at one of the characters and immediately think about someone they work with.
“I work with Guinness.”
“Shandy is totally my boss.”
That kind of recognition is really the point of Barky’s Auto. The characters may be dogs, the dealership may be fictional and the animation may be created with technology that didn't exist in anything like its current form a few years ago, but the experiences behind the stories come from a very real place.
For Striegnitz, that makes the show more than an experiment with AI or an attempt to create automotive entertainment. It is a way of preserving some of the stories and personalities from a family dealership that operated for nearly four decades — and sharing them with an industry that has plenty of its own stories.
The dealership is gone, but the stories remain. Now some of them are coming back as animated dogs. And if you've spent enough time in the car business, there's a good chance you'll recognize someone you know.
Watch Barky’s Auto Episode 5, winner of the World Film Festival in Cannes Best Web/TV series
Barky’s Auto is available on YouTube and Instagram..
