Multibrand Dealerships in 50s and 60s

[JRB53]

Google is failing me! I'm looking for info on new car dealerships in the 50s and 60s that sold more than one brand. I've seen old dealer ads showing Ford-Mercury, Chevrolet-Cadillac, Pontiac-Buick, even Chevy-Olds combinations which all show an understandable low-end-high-end financial choice.  Does anyone have memory (or photos) of dealers selling 3 or 4 brands at that time?  Any dealers that offered ALL of the GM makes?  Which new car dealer offered the largest variety of different brands in 1960?  Did any dealers mix several foreign and domestic makes?

We take this kinda stuff for granted now, but back then "multi-national corporation" meant Coca-Cola.

Thanks in advance,

Jack

[Freeman Cars]

When i was little in the early 1960s, there was a dodge/ plymouth dealer that sold fiats and volvos

Edited February 13, 2016 by Freeman Cars

[Snake45]

In my town, the Ford, Chevy and Dodge stores stood alone. One dealer sold Pontiac and Cadillac, one Chrysler and Plymouth, one Buick and Olds, and one Lincoln, Mercury and AMC.

In my grandparents' town, the Chevy dealer also sold Olds. Come to think of it, they might have sold Pontiacs too. Maybe even Buicks. That was a VERY small town.

[Tom Geiger]

Reedman in Langhorne, PA always sold multiple lines of cars.  Established in 1954,  I remember them advertising as far away as Jersey City, NJ in the late 1960s.  They are called Reedman Toll now and are still in business. They currently sell Chevy, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Subaru, Fiat and Jaguar at one location.  

Edited February 13, 2016 by Tom Geiger

[Tom Geiger]

Here's an ad for a big used car dealer in New Jersey around 1958.  I opened up a wall in my house and found a bunch of wadded up newspaper. This was part of it.

[ChrisBcritter]

Here's a good one. The 1954 Mexican film Yo No Creo en los Hombres was filmed on location in and around Havana, Cuba. This scene was shot in front of a very eclectic dealer...

Packard:

Hillman (on the left):

Mack trucks (sign on the wall):

And just for good measure, Sikorsky helicopters!

[JRB53]

Wow, great stuff on Ralph Reedman. Started out with a Chevy franchise in '54 and by mid-60s he's got a ten different makes.  Does this mean that Detroit had less control back then, so that anyone who had the money could buy a franchise? or did the owner have to set up a "paper-chase" of different buildings/businesses, i.e. Reedman Chevy, Reedman Dodge, Reedman MG, etc.?  Not to get obsessed with detail, but I'm a history buff and the automobile changes from 1955 to 1965 were fantastic. The performance, efficiency, appearance, manufacturing/repair, sales/distribution, and not to mention the overall number of vehicles (no longer one car per family) totally changed America.  I guess that's why I love models from that time period.

[BubbaBrown]

My town they were all separate except for Chrysler/Plymouth. I think multi brands might of been in outer or small towns.

[Kit Basher]

Our little town had a Buick/ Pontiac dealership, and a Ford/ Lincoln/ Mercury dealership. The Dodge dealer was Dodge only. The only foreign car was the Opel, GT and Manta, sold by the Buick dealer. Pretty amazing that a town of less than 1,500 folks had three car dealerships!  Another larger town had a Chrysler/ Plymouth dealer, and a Chevy/ Olds.

[JRB53]

OK, yall have got me started. Tom's newspaper photo reminds me that Google is not the sole source of information in the world.  I'll have to make a trip to the local library or newspaper to see if I can dig through some archives.  Be great to compare local ads of 1955, '60 and '65 to see how the local dealerships evolved in my area.  Anyone know of an online source of old phone books?

[Rob Hall]

50s-60s were before my time, but I do remember in the 80s seeing a  GM full line dealer in Key West, Florida.   i don't recall how the Ford and Chrysler dealers were set up, but they probably had all the brands each also. 

[gtx6970]

Scothorn Motors . About halfway between Hebron and Petersburg in northern Ky Was primarily a Chrysler Plymouth Desoto dealership . But they could get you any GM product brand new, no idea how they did it.

But I've talked to multiple people over the years who they or there parents bought non Mopars new there. ( they didnt stock anything but Mopar )  Place closed back in the early eighties but I was there when the auction happend to buy nos parts and there was a lot of GM parts on the shelf .

Its a bodyshop now.

[Tom Geiger]

Not multi-brand but a few old car dealer newspaper ads I had in my Fotki account. Note that the car companies provided the art for the ad, all the dealer added was the name and address at the bottom.  

[MrObsessive]

Look at the per month payments on that '61 Rambler!  

If only car payments were EVER that cheap again! On the other hand, a Rambler was not exactly the world's best car (to be driven OR seen in), and of course they had nowhere near the safety/convenience features and such we take for granted today.

[talon63]

Foreign sports cars, Chevy Buick dealership, Spitzer Motors of NE Ohio dealt in several brands, but I don't know if they were under one roof, maybe a native can comment. In the late 70's-early 80's I knew of a GM/Nissan dealership in Central VA, where everything was under one roof and the Toyota dealer also carried AMC/Jeep. 

[GLMFAA1]

No too many multi brand dealers, but I remember Lincoln/Mercury, Plymouth/Desoto dealerships and here is an interesting site listing Ohio dealerships that also had 60's muscle car connections.  I think Spitzer had multiple dealerships with different brands but not under one roof.

http://www.oneownercollectorcar.com/index.php/dealerships/235-ohio-dealers-knafel-pontiac-hopkins-chev

greg

[modelercarl]

I grew up in Garden City, MI. and in the 50's we had Ralph Ellsworth Ford and Hershey Chevrolet, just those two.  In nearby towns that bordered Garden City we had Holman Pontiac and Hutcherson Lincoln-Mercury and Ed Carpenter Dodge-Plymouth.  If you wanted anything else I guess you had to go into Detroit to buy it.

I also remember that when new cars were introduced by Ford and Chevy in the fall, sometime in September if I remember correctly, a lot of us kids would get on our bikes and ride up to these 2 dealerships to "review" them.  We could spend hours in the dealership looking at everything they had, dreaming about what we would do to the different models to customize them, etc.  Hershey Chevrolet even took advantage of this pretty quickly making sure all of the kids had ice cream and cup cakes on site and promos to take home knowing that we would bug our parents to go buy one.  Sure wish I would have saved the promos!

[dartman]

In our town (Rochester NY.) we had a Pontiac agency that sold Pontiac's as well as GMC and Jaguar.

[niteowl7710]

The Spitzer Auto Group still exists, and actually has 17 dealerships strewn mostly across the Cleveland Area, although they have a Chevy store in Lordstown and Toyota & Scion (or had Scion as the case may be) here in Western PA in Monroeville. 

I worked doing "Internet marketing" of used cars back in 2000 (before anyone knew what that meant,  and the idea of also offering PHOTOS of the car was a novel idea) and I got the gist that the reason they have so many locations is because everything was split up brand wise across several counties. Interesting that they have 4 Chevy stores, but none of them also carry Cadillac and/or GMC. The only multi-piece dealerships they have are 3 Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram stores, one of which also sells Kias. They have 2 stand alone Kia stores, an Acura store, a Mitsubishi store, a VW store, and 2 Ford dealerships.

Edited February 14, 2016 by niteowl7710

[ChrisBcritter]

OK, yall have got me started. Tom's newspaper photo reminds me that Google is not the sole source of information in the world.  I'll have to make a trip to the local library or newspaper to see if I can dig through some archives.  Be great to compare local ads of 1955, '60 and '65 to see how the local dealerships evolved in my area.  Anyone know of an online source of old phone books?

Not phone books, but Classmates (.com) has thousands of yearbooks online; many of them have ads in the back like this one (from Libertyville, IL):

So look up some old West Virginia yearbooks and you might find some good stuff.

Edited February 14, 2016 by ChrisBcritter

[espo]

Thinking back the dealerships that I remember usually carried brands from within their own manufacturer. For GM say the Chevrolet, if not a stand alone dealership, would have say Oldsmobile. That way they could offer an upscale model without competing with themselves. Cadillac might offer a Buick or Oldsmobile as a lower priced alternative. Pontiac usually had a GMC Truck combo so that they had a truck to also sell. Ford did much the same thing with Ford usually as a stand alone. Usually they would have Lincoln with Mercury as an upscale dealership. A lot of this started in the era just before WW II when in the more rural areas there was few if any dealerships. Many of the very early dealerships started with a repair garage that was given exclusive rights to sell  a particular brand of automobile. It would just grow from there over time. You have to think about the initial investment to open a dealership. Just the building alone was very expensive and some of the earliest franchises were often owned and operated by the manufactures.  Now they manufactures may own the land and building that they lease to the dealer, the manufactures still have a lot of control over what the dealer can and cannot sell.   

[sjordan2]

Multibrand dealerships have been common everywhere I've lived - Tulsa, D.C., Houston, and now Knoxville. In almost all cases, it  has depended on corporate ties, such as Ford's Ford-Lincoln-Mercury (still Ford/Lincoln here in Knoxville).  Except for Cadillac's usually standalone dealerships, you'd find GM brands in multi-dealerships, with Opel squeezed in there somewhere in the old days. One of our largest dealerships now is Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep (Fiat and Alfa are separate). Mercedes sells Smart. BMW dealer sells Mini. Here, the same dealer has separate buildings side by side for VW, Jaguar+Porsche, Infiniti, Fiat+Alfa+Maserati.

Then, there are the superdealers like Rick Hendrick and Rusty Wallace, who have dozens of dealerships in many different towns, selling just about everything. Many brands, like Mini and Fiat, require independent buildings dedicated to one brand, but that's subject to negotiation.

Edited February 14, 2016 by sjordan2

[Fabrux]

Around these parts, the dealerships were always split up Ford-Lincoln, Mercury, Chevrolet-Oldsmobile-Cadillac, Pontiac-Buick-GMC, and I think we've only ever had one Mopar dealership selling all brands. There have been a lot of mergers lately, and now we only have one Ford-Lincoln dealer, one GM dealer for all brands, one Mopar dealer for all brands (including Fiat), but separate dealers for Toyota-Scion, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz (+Smart), Hyundai, Kia, Honda, Volkswagen, and Subaru. 

[Lizard Racing]

I worked at my uncle's dealership one summer in 1968.  He sold Dodge, Chrysler (I think), Fiat, Peugeot and Renault.

This was in the middle of the muscle-car era.  My favorite was the 440 Six-Pack.

[Misha]

Growing up in the Canadian Prairies in the 50-60s the Big Three Detroit dealerships were split up Chev/Olds, Pontiac/Buick, Plymouth, Dodge (both would sell a Chrysler), Ford, Mercury/Lincoln. The foreign brands were another story as entrepreneurs often branded different makes together, though Volkswagen was always on its own. (Eg. Bell Motors from Regina sold Toyota and Mazda).

The main difference in Canada was having specific makes sold here only, for example, a Meteor was a rebranded Fairlane with extra chrome and later used a Mercury platform with less trim, Mercury sold the Frontinac as a rebranded Falcon, and Pontiac sold a rebranded Chevelle as a Beaumont as the Tempest/GTO wasn't sold here till the 70s. Many GM models had different nameplates, Pontiac Laurentian, Chev Biscayne, never had the stretched Bonneville sold up here. Also Vettes before the 68 model were extremely rare, usually brought up from the States. There was one dealership in Calgary that sold Shelbys, yet they were another rare sight.

The 70s saw greater convergence with the US brand and in the last decades many separate dealers merged into one, especially as brands such as Plymouth and Olds disappeared. We are all poorer because of that!

Cheers Misha