Vintage dealerships

The Royal Windsor Garage was located at 334-364 Dougall Avenue, in Windsor, Ontario Canada a few blocks south of the Detroit River. It was a large private three-story parking garagecomplete with service facilities that were in operation as early as 1928. At some point in time possibly post-war, Noble Duff purchased the facility and located his Meteor Lincoln Mercury dealership in the Garage.



This image is of the backside of the building where the Noble Duff Service Department was accessed and where we find a 1957 Canadian Ford Monarch photographed in August of 1958.

 

A Mercury Canadian Ford tractor photographed near the service entrance in 1952.

 

That's really interesting, buying a parking garage, then putting a dealership inside. So that Honda dealer wasn't the first.

 

That's one way to do it eh?

 

I wish I could have sent my dad a message in 1956, telling him about a certain dealership, not that far away, where he could have gotten a Monarch instead. I wonder if there were import taxes for American cars sold in Canada

 

I don't know for certain, but I would be willing to bet there were.

 

Agree on the import duties back then. Would think that Canada would have wanted to protect their industry. The NAFTA treaties which I believe were passed back in Bush Sr's admin changed all that. Result is our 16 Ford Fusion was assemble in Mexico, not the US.

 

The import duties would have been levied to protect the U.S. auto industry, despite most of the parts used for assembling Canadian units were manufactured in the U.S.. I'm sure that the Canadians wouldn't have objected in the least to having exported their products abroad

 

Pittsburg

 

Did we have this Pittsburg-based dealership already?

 

Horvitz Motor Sales apparently handled a few late model cars but the bulk of the inventory which extends behind the Gulf Station contains cars and trucks some of which date back to the late-1920s. The used car and truck lot has not survived, although a National Tire and Battery service center is located on the site today. See a street view of this area today.

 

This series of images was taken in November of 1955 at Mitchell Motors located on West Peach Tree St. (auto row) in Atlanta, Georgia, during the introduction of the new 1956 Oldsmobile models. Further on down the sidewalk a sign for “Hudgin’s Motors Cars and Trucks” is visible and across the street a partial “Packard” sign can be seen.



Anderson’s Septic Tank Service apparently was moonlighting (no pun intended) at the time setting up a spotlight on location and used the Company IHC pickup truck to tow the lighting rig to Mitchell Motors.




Courtesy of The Old Motor

 

This image dated to 1949 by Vintage Philadelphia contains Irvin Sachs New and Used Car lot located at 2535 North Broad St. in Philadelphia, PA. For the most part the business specialized in buying and selling post-war-late-model used cars. Sachs was in the business as early as January of 1944 when “Billboard” magazine reported that he was sponsoring a daily news show on radio station WPIL in the city. A later reference stated that in 1959 Sachs car lot was at 4539 Chestnut St.



Amazingly the buildings have survived with additions to the garages on the left-hand side of the property and the lot is still in use in the automotive trade. Today the Matrix Auto Center a “10-minute oil change” business that also performs “Body Fender & Frame Work” is located there.