It’s finally the weekend and you know what that means. It’s time to deal with that silent family member; the car. And hopefully, you already set up an appointment for some much-needed maintenance at your dealer. What did you use to schedule it? Email, app, or phone call?
However, for today, let’s get away from cold emails, apps, and whatnot. Instead, let’s take a look at these rather swanky service areas from the ’50s; where attending you in style was part of the deal.
A sense of reinventing the dirty repair shop is evident in these promo shots: the streamlined workstations, the spotless floors, and the white uniforms. Everything speaks ‘designed’ to fit the task at hand.
One common theme with ‘usual spaces’ like repair shops or supermarkets is how they slowly evolve under our eyes, until suddenly much has changed without us noticing. I can’t recall if I ever saw workstations such as these, and it’s been a long time since I saw a dual/single post hydraulic lift in action.
I can see why some of these concepts didn’t reach much use. While designers love to micromanage every single activity humans delve into, users have the final say; and products and markets adjust to real usage. And then there are doubtful ideas like white uniforms. I mean, talk about defying fate!
That said, I would love to see one of these stations still in action. As it’s noticeable in this shot, most of these were taken in a few upscale dealer brands such as Cadillac and Buick. And whatever the plan was with these fancy concepts, it was a rather short-lived effort.
I know some commenters will provide more details on some of these tools, like the workstations above, also known as ‘Service Merchandisers’. For the time being, I’ll just say I would like to play around with some of these, as long as I don’t have to wear white uniforms. After all, I’m rather messy when handling tools.
I worked in a Cadillac/Olds dealer as a teenager. (1965-66 ish). It didn’t look like these at all! I’m sure these were all staged.
Remember full service gas stations . Filled tank, checked fluids and tires and washed windows no matter what the weather. In late 50s, piloting out DeSoto, also remember Mom saying Where will it end? Gas ⛽ 29.9 cents a gallon? 😮 . Parents always tipped the attendant. Sometimes the owner himself would do the job. Those were the days. Unfortunately MOM and the DeSoto are long gone and of course full service stations.
Today you have to tell the attendant how much gas you want at least three times until he gets it right!
Attendant?
Obviously a New Jersey resident.
How did you know?
The neighbor across the street was childless but liked kids. He knew I was car-crazy and asked if I wold like to come with him to have his like-new ’64 Cadillac Sedan deVille at Chesapeake Cadillac in Baltimore, around 1966, I would have been 16. It was one of those old-school city dealerships with a multiple floor garage and a fancy showroom out front.
I recall it being spotless and him receiving top notch white-glove service, very polite and accommodating. The service area was not as fancy as these, nonetheless I noted that it was a far nicer experience than we had for our Fords at the time, which were serviced by an Esso at the corner of Burke & York,
whoops, the Esso was at York and Bosley… it was too long ago.
Indeed… the shot on the bus post the other day looked like the old Hutzler’s (or was it Hecht Company?) at York & Joppa, as opposed to the intersection of York and Belvedere as stated.
But I grew up in Rosedale. Towson and such was like a foreign country to me until I got a little older.
Of course my 63 year old memory may be a little off too. 😉
Used franchise agencies for some time. After a bad experience, I found an independent repair shop almost 35 years ago. Great people and reliable service. Always clean 👌. Would not consider going anywhere else! How Lucky can you get?
I remember reading in Car and Driver that the service department floor of the third (and final) exclusive Rolls-Royce dealership in Zionsville, IN was kept immaculate.
I don’t know if it’s still true, but that place is a quite unassuming, little wood-sided building, a very far cry from the huge, large plate glass, brightly lit, massive auto sales buildings of today.
You are thinking of Albers Rolls-Royce. Hermann Albers had been a mechanic at a Rolls dealer in Indianapolis that closed in 1962. He opened an “authorized” Rolls repair shop on the north side of Indianapolis, and was offered a full franchise in the late 60s. It was a modest affair (built from what had been a welding shop in the small community of Zionsville, Indiana), but it was the only Rolls dealer in the state for many years. Zionsville was one of those little towns that became a bedroom community of Indianapolis. It remains a very desirable place to live.
The company is still in business, but is now a specialist in parts/service for older Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars.
As much as I like the old vintage dealer sales floor pics, these are super cool too. Maybe even more cool to me as I’ve never witnessed anything like this! I’ve worked in auto sales for a total of 24 years now (not consecutively) starting in 1988. Most of those years were at a Buick/Cadillac dealer and never saw clean like these. I hate to say it, but the dealer I work at now is a Mazda/Volvo store and it seems like they just don’t care about how the service area looks.
Those in-floor hoists were hugely expensive to install, what with the guts being inside the floor. The floor mount 2-post hoists that are about 100% common these days are cheap as chips by comparison.
That’s probably why two former workplaces of mine still have the hoists still in the floor and concreted over.
One is now a drycleaner, the other is being demolished
Amazing photographs – if these are the service bays, I wonder what the customer waiting rooms looked like?
The cleanest shop I can recall was the Mobil gas station down the street from where I grew up. The owner was meticulous and washed his shop floor daily. My folks used to joke that his service station was cleaner than our house. But even it wasn’t quite the sanitary whitewashed like these photos!
Opposite of the Shell station where I worked. It was filthy, service bays and restrooms alike. Owner drive a Mercedes, so customers mistakenly trusted us to work on European cars.
I like the Cadillac “Scientific Diagnosi(s)”.
They would diagnose the issues with your car’s drum brakes and carburetor scientifically. Cool! No mere service manuals and experienced mechanics who had seen it all before. Nope, leave it all to science…
VW had something similar starting in 1972 for US models, even with the carburated models, point ignition and generators. There was a large connector next to the engine for the dealer to plug in the device. It basically tapped into every circuit to dazzle the customer with the fact that a technician could find a burned out bulb without walking around the car.
“Lubricare” reminds me of “Lubritorium”.
This picture is from the TX Historical Archives (and I’d imagine that it’s H.P. Koph himself in the lab coat standing in front of his shop), but I recall a Lubritorium at some service station when I was a kid. Blue tiled letters embedded in the white tiled front of the Esso or American station.
Our language is poorer nowadays in its lack of manufactured words like “Lubricare” or “Lubritorium”.
I also love the tile work on the floor of the Chrysler dealer service area. Amazing to think that there was a time when there were commercial craftspeople who would create something like that.
Here’s a postcard image of the outside of the Chrysler dealer (Walter E. Allen Chrysler in Oklahoma City). That’s pretty swank too.
Ok, sorry, but as you can imagine there must still be some Buick Lubricare neon signs still around. Here’s a link to one that sold last year for $5400 at Barrett-Jackson.
Worth every penny IMO, and if I ran across that, I’d shirley find 84″ of wall space that I would clear to hang that thing up. So very cool.
https://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1940S-50S-BUICK-LUBRICARE-NEON-PORCELAIN-SIGN-257010
The ‘white overalls in manufacturing and servicing’ is pretty much an advertising trope in its own right.
Chevrolet looked as though they had a sophisticated set-up in the ‘50s.
The Honda dealer we have dealt with since 1988 in South Bend, IN. has a very clean Service Dept.; perhaps Honda still has high standards?? DFO
The company I worked for built its depots in the late 60s / early 70s and the workshops had those retracting dispensers in the roof. The ones in the depots (I think) only had engine oil, gear oil and grease through simple nozzles. Some of the ones pictured have strange contraptions on the end.
I think the mechanic only pressurised the drums as required otherwise the pipes, reels and hoses oozed everywhere.
The original designs had the in-ground hoists and also pits with railings that were suspended from overhead cranes so they lifted out of the way to put a vehicle over the pit. Also the pits had 32VAC outlets for work lights and other extra-low voltage tools.
That’s probably why two former workplaces of mine still have the hoists still in the floor and concreted over.
One is now a drycleaner, the other is being demolished
The one car in my fleet that I take to the dealer is my Honda Civic. Their pull in area where you talk to your service write is immaculate, as is the bay just beyond where customers are not allowed to go.
But where they take your car is an immediate right turn to the other bays. You cannot see see these bays, so who knows if they are kept as pristine. The one bay that you can see just inside the second set of doors is the alignment rack for four wheel alignments. No oil changing there.
And no one at Heritage Honda is wearing white, except for may a salesperson or two.
I always wanted one of those things with retractable hoses hanging from the ceiling for my garage. How convenient it would be to top off oil, grease the ball joints or to add a bit of air to the tires. I know, my low usage rate would never result in fresh lubricants, but I can dream.
I still own the pair of coveralls I bought in the late 70s, with the “Cadillac” patch my mother sewed onto them over the breast pocket. Sadly, they are not white, but blue-gray.
The guy across the street from the VW shop always wore white and I wondered how he kept clean .
I remember a few dealers I worked at that had nice older service bays, none were kept clean as these but all looked nice in white .
-Nate