COVID-19 has left a bloodbath of failed retailers in its wake, many of which were already on shaky ground before the pandemic. You can add famed mail order automotive parts reseller (and your author’s one-time employer) JC Whitney to this list.
Parent company US Auto Parts Network announced yesterday that effective July 16, jcwhitney.com would be shut down and redirected to the company’s flagship carparts.com site as part of their ongoing brand consolidation. Most of the other USAP online properties have already been closed down to allow the company to focus on the carparts.com brand, including autopartswarehouse.com and partstrain.com.
The company said that the JC Whitney name would live on as a house brand name attached to a line of private label products, without specifying what those will be.
JC Whitney had been in decline for decades (read the full story here), despite the failed efforts of multiple ownerships to reverse course. They stopped printing their legendary catalog a few years back and recently closed their sole retail store, an outlet store attached to their distribution center in LaSalle, IL.
It seems somehow fitting that the JC Whitney name, best known for selling cheap Chinese-made parts, will spend its final years affixed to a line of, well, cheap Chinese-made parts.
No article about JC Whitney would be complete without some images from the catalog’s glory days, so I’ve sprinkled a few throughout this post.
But where will we buy light up hood ornaments?
Or kits to make a VW Beetle look like a 1940s Ford or a Rolls Royce?
😉
They once sold headers for Corvairs, and many other cars.
They used to have pages for VW parts, Corvair parts and Jeep and IH Scout parts too.
RIP, JC Whitney. You will be missed.
Somewhere I have a JC Whitney chrome pot-metal gas pedal in the shape of a foot. I tried to install it, and it was so heavy it held the throttle open all the time. Had the item been made from aluminum it would have been great. That’s the sum total of my JC Whitney purchase experience. But I liked looking through that catalog for all the cool/goofy things they offered.
It’s been many a year since I browsed through a JCW catalog, but what I remember vividly was there were still (at that time) large sections devoted just to Jeeps, VWs (air-cooled) and Model As.
I remember looking through the VW section of the JCW catalog back in the 70’s when my dad was into VWs. He used to like the ‘40 Ford makeover kits, but never got one. They reminded him of the ‘39 Ford he had when he was in the service. (This would’ve been the late 1940’s) AFAIK, he never bought anything from JCW, either, unless it was before my time.
The last time I ordered from them was in 1990. Bought all the rebuild parts for a Ford
Y-block 312. Everything came in white unmarked boxes, and fit perfectly.
Saved a bunch of money, and the engine still runs great!
Too bad they lost their way, but other companies like Summit Racing and RockAuto jumped in to fill in the void.
Next thing you know, KaleCo Auto will be going out of business!
“Quieter blinking”? That might explain the people who drive miles with a blinker flashing, little knowing they’re wasting blinker fluid; they can’t hear the thing because it’s so quiet.
Their catalogs were great fun to look through. Why anyone would want to put a fake cell phone antenna on their car, I don’t know. And I remember seeing those silly speakers in the flesh–the ugliness of chrome-plated plastic! And as an organist, I was mentally face-palming and thinking, “That’s not how this works.” But those catalogs were fun, and they sure had a lot of stuff, even for some very, very old cars.
Wait, JC Witless were still a going concern until just now? »boggle«
JC Whitney – didn’t they invent a machine for picking cotton?
No, you are confusing Eli of the cotton gin with the JC department store that is floundering.
At least I didn’t mix ‘ em up with Pratt&Whitney !! Everyday’s a school day at Curbside Classics!!
It happens to all of us. I once called Brooks and Dunn, a not so long ago country music group, “Briggs & Stratton”.
LOL, Jason.
Well, there WERE those who thought it was Garth Brooks & Holly Dunn.
Who was Holly Dunn? Here ya go. Best known for “Daddy’s Hands” in 1986, this one shows off her Rockabilly side and was a Country #1 song 30 years ago. Holly succumbed to ovarian cancer four years ago.
Now if I have to explain who Garth Brooks is…
Wayne & Garth…
Party On!
Sad to see JCW go. I didn’t realize their catalog went out of print several years ago : ( In the late 90’s and very early 2000’s, Dad and I used to order accessories from them for the family cars. He had some very unique vehicles over the years; the ones that stood out in my memory ncluded a gold and white ’73 Dodge Charger SE (he loved pushing that car to it’s limits, even driving it up mountain roads!) and then later a burgundy ’73 Monte Carlo with a whole-roof vinyl top and plain hubcaps, but plenty of getup and go. He bought Mama a beautiful used ’61 Thunderbird and for a time we loved tooling around everywhere in it, but she wasn’t really a Ford person and eventually went back to older German import brands. Meanwhile, in high scool I was able to special order through JC Whitney a tailor-fit car cover that fit a weather-worn clamshell wagon like a glove! I was also considering ordering their contact paper to replace some of the faux woodgrain paneling, but we always just used liquid gold as a quick remedy and it would last till it had rained a few times.
I remember going to the store in Chicago as a teenager. As I recall it was on a corner, with signage on one street J.C. Whitney and the other street Warshawsky, but just one store.
Wherever will I get:
I bought a few things for my VWs from JCW, the most memorable was a loud 4 into 1 muffler. It wasn’t an exact fit and I ended up having to pay a muffler shop to bodge it onto the heat exchangers. I had a ‘console’ with cup holders that fit around the shifter and a magnetic oil plug that captured the metal bits in the oil. Oh, and an oil temperature gauge that had a sensor that went down the dipstick hole.
Good times. Thanks JCW. I spent many hours dreaming over what I saw in your catalog
I had a friend in high school who restored an auto-stick Beetle in preparation for getting his license. He started out using many JCW parts, and my memory is that the catalogue created the impression that all you needed was a vehicle title and funding to complete a VW based on what seemed to be offered. I had another friend in college who was trying to take his newly acquired ’75 Beetle from a nice looking driver to a…fancily upholstered and blower motor equipped nice looking driver. Both of them learned that ‘complete’ or ‘exact fit’ didn’t mean what they thought it meant. I remember a carpet set that seemed to have been cut from a hazy memory of what a VW carpet set might look like.
Winky the Cat! Nooooo!
Sorry to see them go. Like many here I saw one of their catalogs right about the time I started driving, and spent many happy times thinking of interesting things to slather on a car. One of those dreams best never realized, probably, but still fun.
Just in case some here never knew Winky.
Goodbye Winky. We hardly knew ye.
I think Car and Driver did a story on the guy that made these. Wonder if he’s still around.
Pour one out (of cream) for Winky the cat.
Gosh, that imitation cellphone antenna is so cheesy! I figure it would make you more of a target for smash and grabs.
My dad used to get their catalogs when I was a kid; I used to thumb through them. But by the time I reached driving age, I had other sources for parts. Never ordered anything from them.
I wonder how many kids ordered stuff from JCW in anticipation of the cars they’d own someday. Their catalogs were very kid-friendly, drawn like comic books, and many items were cheap.
My proudest Whitney purchase was a custom Mustang badge inscribed, by the logo, “Made for John McMillin.” I glued it to the glove box lid right in front of my seat, but I knew I’d be moving up to the left seat in a year or two. Yes, I saw the Beatles live, and I learned to drive in an original Mustang. You might say I was born at the right time.
I used to order parts for my motorcycle from JC Whitney. Spark plugs were 99 cents and were exactly the same as the $4 plugs from the Honda dealer, same part number, same packaging. Their oil filters were garbage though, a lot cheaper than the dealer item, but the gasket came off very easily, the Honda filter gasket couldn’t be pried off with pliers. You live and learn…
No!!!!!!!!!! Where am I going to get my Rolls Royce grill , winky the cat brakelights, trunk straps and curb feelers?!
This was still a thing recently? The other say I saw Bargain Finders for sale in a gas station. Didn’t know those were still around either.
Maybe I should see if I can still order Winner II shoes from the Sears catalog for 10 bucks.
My ’62 Dodge D-200 is proudly sporting a set of J.C. Whitney chrome headlight eyebrows as we speak. They even got a positive compliment the other day. Strange and disturbing times indeed.
Many years ago I bought a reground crankshaft for my 1968 MGB from JC Whitney. If I recall, it took about three weeks to get it mail order.
Before the Internet, catalogs were the “web.” I bought quite a few things from J.C.W. which guaranteed me countless new issues of their catalog for years. I really enjoyed sitting down with a new catalog and a cup of coffee and just dream of the different modifications I could do to my car.
Anticipation: Guessing what month (in the 60s and 70s) your JCW order will arrive!
They were the first I recall to use a percentage figure as in “increase HP up to XX %” or something as equally silly.
I often wondered what would happen if you exceeded that percentage; would your arm fall off?
R.I.P.
The JC Whitney catalog was the first piece of automotive literature I read on a regular basis. I was 9.
Kinda easy to forget all about them when Rock Auto’s just a click away, although many times my local AutoZone’s just as competitive. They had the best price on struts for my son’s Malibu while Rock Auto blew AZ away on pads/rotors.
Now I just need to get the ‘Bu away from him long enough to do the work…lol…
I picked a copy of the catalog at an estate sale last year- mostly for nostalgia. I took it to work- a GM dealer. No one under forty had ever seen one.
I’m going to order that cellular antennae, can’t wait to see how impressed my friends will be!
Hey! Looks like you’ve got one of those expensive new cellular phones! I AM impressed. Say, is that real weather-resistant metal construction? Sweet!
I never wanted their gimmicky stuff as a kid, but I really enjoyed looking at parts I thought would make good running gear upgrades for the truck I had as a teenager– overload springs, heavy duty shocks, heavier duty brake parts,”west coast” mirrors, and that kind of thing. Most of what I would have bought back then would have cost an arm and a leg to get it shipped to the east coast so ultimately I bought very little from them. I loved to look through the catalog and dream, and I learned a lot about what jukyard parts would fit my vehicles by studying their catalog listings. They were a part of my youth so long ago.
I always wanted the opportunity to use one of their replacement camshafts to replace a “soft” OEM camshaft.
That was before I had a car or even knew what a camshaft was.
And today they sent me an email telling of the impending doom. There is a nice little history on the website.
I was kind of surprised as I haven’t ordered anything from them since I picked up the tailgate handle and a cup/cd holder/armrest seat console for my 84 F-350 on clearance, that is now residing in the 02 F-150. That was back in the late 90’s
I am a little surprised that they have relegated it to a brand name, many of the hard parts items sent you over to the carparts.com site for a number of years now.
Remember when Whitney would ship out a
fan-to-flywheel 8V427, or 3×2 406, whatever you needed to “spruce up” your Ford? Haha
They had other hot mills too, but for whatever reason I recall the Fords.
My Dad must have gotten on their mailing list sometime after he bought his ’59 Beetle (first “2nd” car in the family) sometime in the mid-60’s, because for some reason I only remember the “foreign car” version of the JC Whitney catalog coming to our house, with expected majority of the pages with VW Beetle parts and accessories, but still some French (Renault and Peugeot) and English parts….for some reason I remember the tail lights section from that time the most…probably because cars seemed to have really distinct tail lights back then. Not sure why they had them, guess without the massive bumpers tail lights were pretty prone to breakage back then? (can’t remember the last time I’ve needed to replace anything but the bulb in my recent cars).
I was car-crazed from an early age, and I’m sure I spent hours looking through the catalogs though I was 10 years too young to be in the market for a car myself. It reminds me of a time when I went to a comic book store with my siblings, to spend some “be quiet” bribe money so my parents could talk to their parents without us intervening…instead of a comic book, I picked out a car magazine of some variety, and the clerk was incredulous, based on my age, couldn’t understand why I hadn’t picked out a comic book like my sisters had done, instead of what we had picked out. Never having lived in the same town as my Grandparents, they didn’t know (us, me in particular) very well.
Never got to help my Dad pick out any parts for his ’59 Beetle from JC Whitney, as it was totalled in an accident in front of our house, and he moved on to a new ’68 Renault 10…I think they had (very few) parts listed for the JC Whitney catalog, but there were some (don’t recall what they were)…probably because of the prior Dauphine, which 10 years before had given the Beetle some competition. But my Dad had bought his cars in opposing order of popularity trends, but I still poured over the JC Whitney catalogs even though there was little he could buy for his car ( and he was never into the other car gadgets in their catalog…his vice was computer gadgets (many years later, though he did work at IBM way back then).
Other than JC Whitney and the rare car magazine I was permitted to buy, the other book I spent lots of time with was Todd Burness’ Auto Album…had one of those scholastic book versions…ultimately given to my nephews, who pulled the pages out of the (glued) spine…artifacts from one’s childhood are seldom appreciated as much by a subsequent generation (though probably because neither one is as interested in cars as their Uncle was at their age).
Wow…now I feel like going to Radio Shack…maybe pick up some clothes at Anderson Little on the way home? Good thing we never lived near a JC Whitney retail outlet.
The original warehouse on Cermak+Throop was a pilgrimage for any real gearhead(easy to find by large pylon antenna on building next to it., The bins of misc parts would take a lifetime to sort through but yield treasures for ANY American car and some foreign, most were cheap knock offs but many quality parts often not available elsewhere or outrageously expensive,shipping was fast and cheap(old school) or pick up at store for savings and adventure(it was on the edge of the”hood”even then). Move to LaSalle marked doom as debt financing never ends well especially on low margin and loss of decades of sunk cost inventory with markup potential. My long line of Jeeps had many parts from there and even speed parts from street racing days-was looking for parts/tools for a old jeep, motorcycle but found them gone.
I bought a ton of stuff, GOOD stuff, thru the ages from the 1950’s into the 1980’s, hot rod stuff made by Hurst, swap over motor mounts, dropped center link for shoebox Ford, starter swap over for early Olds, Model A parts, ’55 Chevy parts, just wish I had bought them out of the stuff and ratholed it for today! Ahhh, those were the days!