Your Own Fantasy Car Dealership

Mr_Shiftright

If you could be the owner of any type of car dealership, of any era in automotive history, which would you choose?

It could be 1913 or 2013.

Think about not only the type of car you'd sell, but the type of cars you could drive everyday, the kinds of people you'd meet and what was going on in the world around you.

You can be as specific as you wish...type of car, year or era, even location in the world.

stever

Tlong just beat me to it.

tlong, "The State of the US Auto Market" #2726, 16 Aug 2013 1:11 pm

Amazon, in other words, but you get to test drive before you pay. Repairs get done in the affiliate down the street.

fintail

A MB dealer in the early 60s would have been cool, especially on the west coast (where rust isn't an issue). Amazingly diverse product line - you'd have everything from the last of the 300SLs to modern cars like fintails to traditional cars like final run Adenauers. The clientele was mostly people attracted to the engineering and build quality, status wasn't a big deal yet. Or to sell them in Europe, where you had all the cars plus the amazing commercial/industrial vehicle lineup.

Mr_Shiftright

Mercedes as a status symbol really didn't register with most Americans until the late 1960s / early 1970s I think. That's when Mercedes really began to push hard in America, seeing the ripe fruit of Cadillac waiting to be plucked off a low branch, so to speak.

ohenryx

Mopar, late 50's. No doubt, no question.

In those years, my father was working as a mechanic at a Mopar dealer. Some days, instead of riding the school bus home, I would walk down to the dealership and hang out.

Back in those days, my brothers and I would try to identify every car we saw, make, model, year. Every kid was car crazy. Well, the boys anyway. It was a wonderful time to be alive.

lemko

...would have a Cadillac dealership from 1946 thru the 1970s. After that, I'd retire.

Mr_Shiftright

Well maybe not ALL the way through the 70s, so you could avoid the heart attack most Cadillac dealers had in 1973.

lemko

Yeah, but if I survived the gas crunch for a couple years I'd make it to the late 1970s when Cadillac sold its most cars ever. I think they sold like 350K in 1978 and I'd definitely want part of that action. I'd bail sometime in mid-1980 before I saw atrocities like the V-8-6-4, 4.1 Litre, and the Cimmaron!

Mr_Shiftright

Yeah but in real life you can't have it both ways---well I guess I mean as a dealership with a huge investment you have to take the good AND the bad as a whole experience. I'm with you, I would have quit the Cadillac dealership at the end of the 70s. I think the "sweet spot" for Cadillac was about 1949--1972 in terms of a dealer making money. Packard was dropping out, Lincoln was going nowhere and Mercedes was not a big player.

andys120

would look something like this>



The early 1960s were a kind of golden age for Euro imports of all kinds. The dealers were usually multiline outfits operating out of facilities that would seem quite primitive now, basically garages, sometimes with a small showroom.

My ideal dealer would be located in a small city, preferably a college town like San Luis Obispo, Princeton or Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill. I'd carry Porsche, Alfa Romeo, BMC (MG, Triumph, Jaguar, Healey, Mini) and a couple of oddballs like Lancia, Peugeot or Saab. Imagine going home and having to decide between taking the Alfa Sprint Veloce or the E-Type.

Of course I'd be out of business in a decade and a half unless I was smart enough to latch onto a Honda or Datsun franchise. :shades: