It’s midweek and a good chance to take a break from work and visit those nifty showrooms of the past. Why worry about today’s chores? Isn’t it nicer to wonder what cool ride to purchase back in the day? Just take a look at this Chevrolet dealer in Wichita. That’s a rather sweet Vette. And what about that fancy lamp on the ceiling? Talk about mid-century modern!
Needless to say, visiting dealers as a child was cheer delight, and showrooms were just downright magical. To enter those doors, after a walk around the lot, meant a purchase was more likely. The family was to get a new car, and the imagination swirled around that. And while Mom and Dad signed the dotted line, walking around the cars on display just added pleasure to the ritual.
And looking at these old images, I can easily imagine myself spending a good deal of time in more than a few.
Here’s a ’49 Chevrolet, and I see they were Pet Friendly back then. There are some ‘ghostly’ humans in this image, probably the result of customers not staying still long enough for the picture. But who can blame them? Those were the first true postwar Chevys!
Some new ’51 DeSotos. Nice carpeting and decorations, with a peculiar TV-looking display in the back (Update: It’s a rear-projection film strip screen). Is that a salesman or a mannequin next to it?
Far simpler are the accommodations in this Valiant dealer in Scranton. No problem, I’ll go and take a look at any Valiant regardless of its surroundings.
What’s better than a Starfire Christmas? And what’s that on the back seat? A prop? Another pet?
A bunch of Dodge Boys, with a ’69 Coronet 500 Convertible.
How could we not have a trés moderne Cadillac dealer? Such restrained elegance, so ’60s chic.
And for the closing, something completely different, a ’73 Monte Carlo at the showroom.
I hate to say that I won’t sign any dotted line today, but it was a nice tour nonetheless.
Nice pics! I love this sort of thing. Thanks for posting.
I am noting the coats and ties and serious appearance of the salesmen and I wonder if car buying in the early 1960s was more formal and businesslike thank it has become.
Everything was more formal and businesslike before the 70s, when the 60s counter-culture went mainstream. Question Authority, man!
A local Ford dealer still had the guys in cheap suits into the 1990’s. Now, it seems to be corporate clones in matching polo shirts.
Ever seen this before? 1956 Packard showroom.
The bronze-and-white 400 hardtop in the foreground looks like it has early ’60s narrow-band whitewalls on it.
Can I just reach in that photo and grab one of those for myself? I’ll take the white Caribbean hardtop third from front, thank you, though any of the front three would be all kinds of awesome. Any idea which dealer that was?
How sad this same view would be one year later…
It sure does. All the others appear to have the wide whitewalls popular at the time. The only narrow whitewalls I can recall at the time was when my uncle bought replacement tires for his Cadillac around 1960. They were some sort of expensive, premium tires (brand unknown) that had pencil thin white stripes. Don’t recall seeing them on any other car at the time.
After reading your post I had to reply. On 1961, I was 6 years old and nothing was more important to me than cars. Everything about them. A trip to our car dealerships that lined the main street in Reseda California was better to me than a trip to Disneyland. Every year in September, when the new cars were announced our local Ford dealer “Town and Country Ford, would bring in those huge search lights that Hollywood used at movie premieres. There was nothing like it. Your comment about the white walls hit home with me. My dad had a 56 Cadillac, it was lilac and white, coupe deville. Really ugly colors. But in the early 60s it needed new tires. The thin white walls were just becoming popular, so when dad came home from the tire shop, the Cadillac was wearing a set of new tires with the very thin white walls. When my brother saw the car he said the thin white walls made the car looked very smart. I have never forgotten that. My dad, brother and myself were standing in our garage looking at the car. That was more than 60 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.
That is a *huge* showroom! It would be for almost any brand!
That looks more like a Packard display at an auto show held in a large arena. And wow, I have never noticed narrow whitewalls on a car from that era!
I was thinking the same – how many dealerships have a open chassis car on display (as in the back of the room here?) Note also the rear signage identifies the brand as “Clipper” rather than “Packard” – early ’56 then, before attempts to separate those brands failed. It’s just too neat (and big) for a typical dealership display.
That’s a car show display I think Stephen .
Those Packards look great .
-Nate
Sad that modern dealerships are designed by committee at the corporate level.
It’s
blandbrand control.Love these old pics of showrooms from the good old days. Not like this bland and uninspiring stuff we have today, but then the showrooms of today are doing nothing but showcasing the bland box SUV’s anyhow. So maybe it’s the classy cars I miss more than the classy showrooms?
Looks like the dealer in Scranton also sold Studebakers.
I noticed that Lark right on the other side of the open doorway.
A number of non-Studebaker dealers picked up a franchise to sell the Lark (only) in 1959 because they were rather desperate to have a compact to sell. The sign on the dealership would just have “Lark”, and not “Studebaker”.
And of course many/most of them dropped it in 1960 when the Big 3 compacts arrived. Looks like this Valiant dealer hadn’t yet made the complete switchover.
And of course in 1960, Valiant was a brand of its own, so this could be a Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto or Chrysler Dealer, or some combination thereof.
I can’t get over how people used to dress up to go to a car dealership…
The lighting, or whatever that flowery ceiling decoration is in the ’61 Chevy showroom, is amazing.
The “ghostly” humans in the 1949 Chevrolet shot are a result of available-light photography (without flash) combined with the era’s low-ISO film that wasn’t very light-sensitive and needed to be exposed for longer than a blink of an eye as in recent decades. That was why the open door is so dark, and the background light though the windows is so bright. Keep in mind “flash” in 1949 meant attaching a separate flash gun to your camera, inserting a single-use flashbulb, then waiting a minute after taking the photo for the red-hot used flashbulb to cool down. Then you removed the spent flashbulb and inserted another one. Indoor photography was expensive; every shot required a flashbulb, film, and developing.
The TV-like thing in the DeSoto showroom may be a rear-projection filmstrip screen. Some of those promotional filmstrips are on YouTube now. (Filmstrips! there’s an obsolete medium if there ever was one, but one that everyone who grew up in the ’50s through ’70s will remember from school.)
“I can’t get over how people used to dress up to go to a car dealership…”
That wasn’t “dressing up”, that’s just how people dressed in those days.
My father (b. 1925, d. 2015) would never think of leaving the house in a t-shirt; to him, t-shirts were “underwear”. He never owned a pair of “dungarees” (aka “blue jeans”) in his life – those were for laborers to work in. A baseball cap was only worn if he was playing or spectating actual baseball. “Sneakers” were only worn to work around the house, hard-soled shoes for leaving the house, always.
It was a different time.
The changeover to more casual clothing must have been fairly rapid. I see photos from the 1950s through about mid-’60s where most people look dressed-up to my eyes. But from my earliest memories from the early ’70s, casual dress (t-shirt/jeans/sneakers) were the norm for attending school or going shopping, as well as lounging around at home. It will always look bizarre to me to see rock bands from 1963/64 dressed in suits and ties.
Whole dissertations have been written on this. In 1955/6, Marlon Brando and James Dean appeared on screen (“On the Waterfront” and “Rebel Without a Cause”) wearing white t-shirts, previously thought of as underwear, as street clothing. Around the same time as the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, giving teens and young adults their own music. The teen demographic appears for the first time – previously, teens were just thought of as miniature adults.
Once teens become a defined demographic, marketing gurus pitch directly to them, and an era is born.
The newspaper pictures, yearbooks, vacation photos (eBay) and such really document the change between, say, mid-1960s and mid-1970s (I think they’re a fairer representation than the era’s advertising or Hollywood films). It’s only a tangent, but we also see how much slimmer the middle-class American” was (a more recent phenomenon than the dress-casualizing).
Rich Baron: I never tire of seeing showroom photos–thanks!
Yes, the days before huge dealer mega chains when you might actually be waited on by the owner. When a medium sized city would have around a dozen Chevy and Ford dealers each. Now there might be three, all owned by the same conglomerate. At new car buying time my parents, thrifty depression era types, would visit every dealer in town to see who would offer the best deal. A months long marathon for sure. They once rejected a close by dealer in favor of one across town over $25.
Recall that these old time dealerships treated the annual new car introductions like a national holiday. Windows were papered beforehand so no one could get a peek before the anointed day. Newspaper ads abounded. When that day finally came, there was fanfare, coffee, donuts, prizes and stuff for the kids. Today, new models just kind of slink in throughout the year. Not that anyone can tell the difference. Not the same as when everyone could tell the difference between a ‘60 and ‘61 Chevy.
The last new model year party we were invited to (and attended) was in the fall of ’72 at Peacock Buick, then I think in Falls Church, VA, but about to move west of Tysons Corner. I remember hot dogs and balloons and the new Colonnades. My dad had earlier gotten fed up with the service dept at Temple Buick, which was much closer to us in Alexandria, but he ended up buying a ’73 Century wagon from Larry Buick in Arlington.
Trying to find the original location of Peacock, I found an obit of its then owner, Norman Bernstein, whose sons Michael Peacock and Jim (not Montgomery) Burns inherited. Did the son change his name to match the dealership or vice versa?
I love the Cadillac dealership! Looks like it was Heritage Cadillac in Lombard, IL. That showroom was built in 1967 when the dealership moved from downtown Chicago. The dealership is still in the same location, though the building was demolished last year. (In recent photos, the showroom interior appears to have lost its period decor along the way, and looked pretty generic after a few decades.)
Here’s an exterior picture from the grand opening season:
I like the spinning Cadillac crest.
That must have been difficult to heat in Chicago. Such extravagance!
In the mid-50s, a new Cadillac dealership was opened in Sherman Oaks, California. Sherman Oaks is a very affluent area in the San Fernando Valley, just a few miles from Hollywood, so the clients were mostly professionals, doctors, lawyers and of course the entertainment industry. The dealership was huge, it spread out over a couple city blocks. The showroom had floor to ceiling windows in front and both sides. The name was Casa de Cadillac, written in large letters across the front, and it was written the same script as on the cars. It was the biggest business on Ventura Blvd. Every one was knew Casa de Cadillac. Just down the street was Ralph Williams Ford. He did all his own TV commercials. He was like a movie star.
That “downtown Scranton sale days” pic looks soo depressing.
A police Valiant?
Suddenly it’s 1973. Elegance is gone forever.
Don’t feed the DeSoto…
I can smell the new cars!! My earliest memory of a car dealer was when my mother took our new 64 Cutlass in to an Olds dealer for service. While she talked to her salesman, I occupied myself getting into and out of a light blue 88 on the floor of the small showroom. After a couple of in-and-outs, one of the salesmen locked the doors to keep me out. I showed him – I never, ever bought a new Oldsmobile. 🙂
Thanks for presenting these photos. Mr. 80-year-old will add a few remarks. In the 1950’s new model announcement and the week after the new models were announced was a time of great activity in new car dealerships. People would even take off early from work to get to the showrooms. The new models arrived under wraps and were kept that way until the announcement day. People clamored to see the new models. The picture of the 1949 Chevrolet came with a caveat, which is that one still needed to have a chit that was won in a purchasing lottery in order to buy the car. This was due to the scarcity of new automobiles post-WWII compared to the demand. In 1950, this was no longer needed. In a late 1940’s George Bruns – Gracie Allen radio program, this problem is illustrated with much laughter. For you young guys and ladies, not only did we dress up for work for white collar jobs, but there were codes of dress. Have you heard of “Straw Hat Day?” On May Fifteenth, one doffed his felt hat and commenced wearing a straw hat which was worn through Labor Day. Men’s suit fabrics were, of course, lighter weight woolens and cotton seersucker. In the 1950’s, a new style of casual coat for the cold months emerged. It was called the “Car Coat” or “Car Jacket.” We still wear them, but we do not use this nomenclature. The car coat was of shorter length than a dress coat which made it easier to slide in and out of one’s driver’s seat. They were insulated. The fabrics were natural and synthetic materials and were washable. The automobile was changing our lifestyle. Of note, it changed the fashion of women’s dresses in the first decade of the twentieth century. At that time, women wore shaped, tight-at-the-ankles skirts. The automobile’s height to the running board made it difficult to enter. So, fashion changed! The skirts no longer fitted close to the ankles. Keep these great photos coming! Love them! Tom
I remember the term “car coat” from when I was a kid, but I didn’t know exactly what they were. Thanks.
The screen in the DeSoto dealership looks to be a rear-projection film strip screen. There were no tvs that big in 1951.
That’s most likely what it is. I kept looking at it wondering what it was, since VHS decks were not popular in 1951. I’ll add a small update.
Why did Chevrolet make so many bare-bolt bumpers in the mid 70s? It just screams Cheap! I can see it on the Biscayne, if that still existed, but the Monte Carlo? The recession didn’t hit until MY ’74.
Everything was optional back then. Bumper guards and rub strips where separate options.
Speaking of ghosts, the DeSoto has a ghost taxi sign on its roof. No doubt daydreaming of its future job.
That 62 Olds Starfire’s trim is so overdone and yet I still love the car as I much as when it was new.
Thanks, Rich, what a trip down memory lane these pictures create. Besides going to my first car show in fall 1960 and seeing the gorgeous new 61 Lincoln Continental and Thunderbird, we also spent time in the Ford showroom because my Dad ended up buying two new 61 Falcons. Fortunately our salesman was more kid-friendly than Mr. Cavanaugh’s because I never got locked out of the one Thunderbird on the showroom floor – even though he must have had to clean up the drool. I also remember sitting in the driver’s seat of a beautiful Galaxie 500 two-door hardtop (Corinthian White with red interior) with the “Thunderbird” roofline. Truthfully most people in our town drove Falcons, Ford Custom sedans, Biscaynes, maybe an Olds 88, et al, not Galaxies, Thunderbirds, or Starfires. But those showrooms were real dream-makers and by the mid-late 60s when salaries were higher and two-salary households more common, there was a real surge in buying more expensive, dreamy cars (hello LTD and Caprice). Hard to believe car buying once was a fun experience.
Ahh, the 1968 Cadillacs. Such nice cars with the new 472 V8 underhood. I’m liking that Sedan DeVille in light body color with dark vinyl top. Nice.
My earliest memory of a car dealership was 1955, as my father was negotiating the purchase of his first brand new car. The 1957 Pontiac fastback was traded on a Chevy 210, thrift six, power glide.
I recall it was late in the evening, as he and mom wrangled, my 10 year old self had full reign of the Wink Chevrolet dealership in Detroit. Most of the other salesman were gone as I tried out the owner’s office chairs next to his large aquarium and tropic fish. I scarfed up lots of car brochures as they also sold GMC,
I have a crystal clear memory of dad paying for the Chevy as somewhere at $1600. I also knew that my Mom was adamant at getting $75 for the Pontiac.
BTW, suits and ties and dreeses were de rigueur, and I wore my best clean dungarees.
I ended up driving that car through high school.