These snapshots are part of a series I’ve recently become aware of, found at The Portal Of Texas History. In this case, the shots were taken by WBAP-TV at Forth Worth, in 1962.
Take a look around, and pick your choice: Chrysler, Plymouth, Valiant, or Imperial?
I’m loving that pickup in the last image .
-Nate
Yep that is a great looking truck.
Back in 1962 Chrysler-Plymouth dealers weren’t exactly on the grandiose side, were they? I can understand why management pushed for a complete refurbishing and upgrade in style to the dealership buildings. The last building of the bunch, when compared to what a Cadillac (or in my home town, Pontiac-Cadillac) dealership looked like was downright dowdy.
Problem is that you pay for “grandiose” when you buy a car, as if they aren’t already expensive enough.
Crummy premises don’t move merchandise. The Chrysler corporate standardization and real estate program used.inexpensive standardized building on new property. The only expensive part of the program was putting new stores on the prime real estate of the day. It is a continual contest between manufacturers/wholesalers and retailers. Wholesalers want to maximize volume, which requires capital investment in prime retail locations and deep retail inventory . Retailers usually want to minimize their own capital investment, and are willing to lose a small number of sales to save a large amount of capital investment in premises and inventory.
The Chrysler Plymouth dealer in the town I grew up in was tiny. even smaller then these. it had probably a 1500 sqft show room that fit two cars and barely two sales desks. Then behind that they had a full-service gas station and an old brick building they used for service with 3-4 bays. It lasted that way all the way until 2005 or so. Then it was briefly a Chevy dealerships used car lot now it’s an enterprise rent a car.
Yes, this probably wasn’t unusual in a small town, especially if it was for a non-established make. My Dad bought a ’68 Renault 10 new in South Burlington, Vt. which isn’t that big, but also Renault still wasn’t that established in terms of dealers…it was more like a small garage than a car dealership where he picked up his (not far from the airport in South Burlington, Almartin Motors).
I used to work for Hertz as a transporter in ’77 and ’78, many of their rental locations where we had to find to pick up a car were pretty small…mostly gas stations and the like. I remember picking up a car in Lake Placid and wondering how they were going to get all those people accomodated for the Olympics in 1980…well, many of them stayed in Burlington and even further as there really isn’t that much up in that area for accomodations. Sometimes it took quite a while for us just to find the rental office once we arrived in the destination for the first time (sometimes we had street address, but sometimes not).
I wonder how much that impacted Imperial sales in particular? That last dealership, Fred Oakley, has Imperial signage, and I can see buyers in that market segment feeling indignant at having to deal with what they might consider a “shabby” lower-end dealership. I bet the local Cadillac dealership looked quite a bit nicer.
This is what a retail street in Dallas looked like on a typical sunbaked day in 1962, as seen by a photographer who wasn’t trying to glamorize it.
Here’s what Fred Oakley Motors looked like dressed up for dinner.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/autohistorian/3698194103
There’s a tiny, interesting looking English car repair shop in San Pedro, Ca. that I discovered was a Ford dealership in the 1950’s, I doubt they could crap more than three cars in the showroom.
When VW was trying to get a toe hold in America in the 1950’s more than a few guys applied for and received a franchise but only wanted to handle a few cars from friends & family, VWOA put a stop to that and required specifically made dealership buildings and minimum parts stock to ensure they’d make it .
-Nate
2nd photo: Is that the back of a ’59 El Camino behind the trailered fiberglass outboard?
I’m going to say that it is, a ’59 model. I wonder if it came in on trade for a more “normal” Dodge pickup.
Yup, a 59. Can’t be sure of the roofline though.
In the 50s and 60s our relatively small community had Chrysler Plymouth, Dodge Plymouth, and DeSoto Plymouth dealerships. Dodge is the only surviving one. BUT somehow the DeSoto Plymouth dealership held on selling Plymouth (including ugliest 62s) until several years later when he retired.
Great to see these frozen moments in time, Texan or otherwise….and now I know of another online archive to browse—great!
I couldn’t easily find much newspaper advertising; here’s an unremarkable Fred Oakley ad from June 1963:
An 8-year-old Studebaker 6 for $190? I guess it was pretty obvious that it was about to become an orphan, or else it was beat to death.
Well, it’s about $1,900 today.
The vehicle fleet wasn’t nearly as old in 1963 as 2023. Replacement rate was significantly >10 percent. Now it’s significantly less. Also….AIR CONDITIONING in Texas. That 55 Stude 6 don’t have it, wouldn’t work well with it, and wouldn’t be worth installing it. The car is worth $0 to anyone who can sign a note for an air conditioned car.
These “Valiant” brand signs are a reminder of that interesting transitional period where automotive brands would go from selling variations of a single car to selling multiple distinct vehicles. This would actually make a good CC post, if there isn’t one already.
What we now call “trim levels” (300, Windsor, Saratoga, etc.) were actually marketed as separate models at the time. Some effortlessly flowed into this new definition of model (Chevrolet with the Corvair and Ford with the Falcon), while others still clung to the old definition of “brand” and “model” for at least a little while (Comet and Valiant).
Please elaborate on that. To my mind, a 1949 Oldsmobile 88 and 98 would be different models because they had different body shells–the 98 body shell was bigger. If two cars of the same make share a body shell but one has more standard equipment than the other, that’s a trim level. Are we on the same wavelength?
The prospect went to the dealer for an “Oldsmobile.” The extra size of the 98 was a selling feature to entice more bucks from the same prospect, like fancier trim. The trim levels were seen and sold as significantly different models.
When models really proliferated, a Cutlass prospect probably didn’t want either an 88 or a 98. That was a car for someone else. The Cutlass and the 98 weren’t on the radar of the same customer. They were seen and sold as significantly different models; the trim levels weren’t so important.
It’s a reflection of the fragmentation of the market. Once upon a time (in the ’20s & ’30s) if a there was an identified niche for a smaller/cheaper or otherwise differentiated car within a division or manufacturer, they almost invariably gave it a different name (brand). Hence the companion makes at GM. In modern times, the Pontiac would have been a model, not a brand (the “Oakland Pontiac”). Studebaker had Rockne. Packard had Clipper. Etc..
The 1959 Studebaker Lark was widely known as just “Lark” and some dealers only sold it and had Lark signs on their dealerships.
The 1960 Big Three compacts took different approaches, with Chevrolet and Ford choosing to use their “prefix” on their new compacts, whereas the Valiant was a brand, because it was sold by both Plymouth and Dodge dealers initially.
This was a somewhat awkward transition, as Chevrolets and Fords had always been a single line of models, although there was some substantial differentiation within them. But starting with the Corvette and Thunderbird, and then the Corvair and Falcon, the brand name took on new meaning, now covering a wide and growing number of distinct car lines.
Interestingly, the trend has gone back the other way, with an increase in brands, which are now more narrowly attached and identified with certain specific characteristics, like Dodge with high performance sedans/coupes. This is extremely common in China, where manufacturers create new brands regularly, to distinguish them because of specific identity/market segment.
Stellantis and Volkswagen have both used this strategy widely, and successfully. Ford and GM not so much so, probably because of painful history with their failed brands.
Chrysler introduced Valiant as a separate brand, not a Plymouth model. GM gave all of its brands exc Cadillac small companion cars as models, not different brands. Chrysler rejiggered its marketing with superficially different Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Lancer, then gave Dodge the bigger 1963 Dart to better compete with the BOP and Comet senior compacts.
GM gave all of its brands exc Cadillac small companion cars as models, not different brands
I beg to differ. The companion brands wee genuine “brands”, not models. They were another product/brand/make of the respective divisions. They are considered individual brands/makes in all the stats, Encyclopedia of American cars, etc..
There’s zero mention of Oakland in this 1927 Pontiac ad:
The GM compacts that competed against Valiant were sold and titled under the same brand name as the standard size cars. The GM separate brand cars like Viking were 30 years before Valiant and long gone exc Pontiac.
I believe it was stated on one of the other postings, but I can see why the dealers were required to standardize the signage and logos in the sixties. Assured the customer which brand they were approaching considering the smaller franchises had more used and only a handful of new cars out front.
Somebody parked their ’56 Ford in front of the second last photo’s dealer. Jack Henry’s. Maybe it was the photographer’s car. He was later chewed out for doing that.
I love the sign in the window in the top shot – “Share Our Success!” There may have been lots of things plentiful enough to share from a Chry-Ply dealer in 1962, but success was not one of them.
I think many dealers into the very early 60s were still in buildings that dated to the 1920s and 30s, especially in smaller communities. Just like many places in the 1980s-90s were still selling cars out of dealerships designed and built in the early 1960s.
I’m no fan of Virgil Exner, whose career was similar to a baseball slugger who either homered or struck out. Looking at the Valiant, this was clearly a homer. Crisp, distinctive styling, but maybe a bit jarring at the time. Really a beautiful design in 4 door form. The 2 door, not so much. With the bigger slant six this was by far the superior compact in the early sixties.
I wonder what was going on inside the heads of Mopar dealers between 1960-1963 -clearly this was not Chrysler’s finest hour.
My hometown’s Chrysler-Plymouth dealer was also in a very unassuming tiny brick building.
The 1962 Plymouth has really grown on me over the years. It slowly started in the late ’70s with one of my brother’s high school friend’s black Fury with Cragar Mags.
The early smaller Mopars have settled into a mental niche that was created later by Chevelles, Fairlanes, and Chrysler’s own popular muscle cars. In a world dominated by the Impala, Catalina, and Galaxie, they were stubby, goofy cars for weirdos.
The old Chrysler-Plymouth dealers in my area were a real treat. One went back to the 1930’s. One of them looked a lot like the Midtown dealer in the photos. Two of them went under in in the early 1980’s. Another added Mazda and Delorean, but still went under by the mid 1990’s.