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Photos copyright Charlie Beesley.
I don’t know about you, but when I was a teenager, I worked in auto repair garages and filling stations. Those weren’t terribly lucrative jobs, but I enjoyed them thoroughly. Great education and lots of fun.
I even worked at a car dealership for a few weeks when I was eight years old – our local Hudson agency in La Feria, Texas. Car dealers, both new and used, plus repair shops and garages occupied a corner of my early attention span, and those thoughts flooded back as I looked over Charlie Beesley’s collection of automobile-related photographs. Simply put, he’s gathered a lot of candid shots of early dealerships and shops, and together we’ve chosen a couple of dozen in hopes that they’ll stir fond memories in you as well.
The first set of pictures, which we call “Sales,” shows auto dealerships in various states of sophistication. The photos are not arranged in any order, the idea being to give you the same tingles of emotion that I got when I first saw Charlie’s pictures. The “Sales” batch flows into a second series, which we’ve dubbed “Service,” that shows repair garages. Or just people making repairs, some sans shops.
As before, these are not car pictures so much as they’re candids that happen to have cars in them. Each one tells a story about an aspect of American life and culture that’s rarely documented and generally falls through the cracks of history. What Charlie and I think we’re doing is trying to put such scenes back in their frames.
One thing that strikes me each time I look at old pictures like these is how messy things were in days of yore. People weren’t so concerned with being neat and tidy, neither in their person nor in their property. Lawns didn’t get mowed, houses needed paint, fences had slats missing, stuff got strewn around and, obviously, no one much cared. That was the way things were. Today, we middle-class wonks demand that everything look orderly and new and glossy. If it doesn’t, we toss it out. Or at least give it a coat of fresh paint.
Anyway, Charlie and I hope you’ll like both types of photographs – the sales and the service sides of a bygone era – and that the pictures will bring back the same sorts of pleasant memories I got when I first discovered them.
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A Stutz salesman stands proudly outside his dealership and beside the 1928 Weymann-bodied beauty he hopes to sell. So far as we can tell, the dealership was in San Francisco or Oakland, and there’s a sign in the showroom window advertising two used Cadillacs, a used Stutz, Packard, Marmon, Stephens, Chandler, Cole, Daniels, Hupp and Jordan.
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Two matrons walk blithely past a row of new Studebaker Larks, oblivious to the cars but obviously having a good time. The woman on the right holds a mug of coffee in her hand. This is not what the dealer had in mind.
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A Renault Dauphine and its salesman, possibly in Quebec, complements a line of Dauphine rear bumpers visible at the far left. This little beauty is offered for $50 down and payments of $1.75 a day ($52.50 a month). Sounds like a good deal to me.
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The women might be sisters, maybe even twins. They probably work at the Nash dealership, and the 1956 models have just come in. “New,” says the ceiling sign, which isn’t strictly true, and another sign says “Bigger brakes,” something most cars back then could use.
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Pat’s Auto Farm used to be on South Figueroa in Los Angeles. Pat McGinnis billed himself for 20 years as the “owner and lot boy.” His slogan said, “Always a Good Crop of Good Used Cars.” The same address now houses four shops specializing in smog inspections, mufflers, tires and fuel injection.
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I remember seeing this very Davis on this exact lot when I worked in Los Angeles in the early to mid-1960s. The Mayfield Car Co. was on Hollywood Way and Riverside Drive in Burbank, and it specialized in classics and oddballs. Parked side-by-side are a Pierce-Arrow, a Lincoln K and a Packard.
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Car dealerships were not very trig in the early days, nor was anything else. Overland became America’s second-best-selling nameplate (after Ford) for a time, and Willys-Knight was also held in high regard. This was the Holmes Motors dealership, location unknown.
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The Paul Murray Nash agency thrived from 1950 through 1957 in Richmond, California, near the UC Berkeley campus. Murray’s used-car lot offered a handful of Nashes along with older cars that might appeal to students and professors.
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Selling used cars was not a job for sissies, especially at Howard Ford in 1950. This unsmiling salesman points out the finer qualities of a 1941 Nash which, if you’re interested, he’ll shovel out from under the snow where it’s been hibernating for much of the winter.
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A buyer sits at the wheel of a new 1953 Pontiac Catalina hardtop, trying it on for size. We’ll never know whether he bought the car or not, but for this brief moment, he looks pleased and perhaps a little fearful that the salesman has something nefarious up his sleeve.
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This young lady seems even less sure of her potential purchase than the fellow in the Pontiac. Maybe she’s unsure that she ought to buy a Chevrolet, but it could also be that she’s wondering whether it should be a convertible.
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Another salesman in a totally different situation, this picture was taken in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where Studebaker had an affiliated company that sold light- and medium-duty trucks. From the expression on the guy’s face, it looks like he’s doing all right.
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The Vintage Car Store in Nyack, New York, branched out early into imports, notably Renault and Peugeot. Inside the showroom were Rolls-Royce and Bentley, with demos and used sports cars like the MGA and TD left out in the elements.
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Orvil Long might have taken this 1930 or 1931 Cadillac V-16 Fleetwood towncar in trade, and I could see that he might be reluctant to let it go again. It did make a good rolling billboard and was probably also fun to drive around Woodland.
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And now we come to the “Service” section of our photo-graphic essay. Shops like this spanned the transition between carriages and cars. One of the very weakest aspects of early automobiles was the puncture-magnetic nature of pneumatic tires. Here the mechanic pulls out an innertube without removing the wheel or tire.
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Tires wore quickly back then, and vulcanizing became an accepted and relatively inexpensive way to extend tread life.
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Inventor Henry M. Lambert of Portland, Oregon, developed an airless tire in 1918 – something we’re still searching for today. Why it didn’t succeed we don’t know. Mr. Lambert also invented a rotary engine around that same time.
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The Cram Brothers of Colfax, Washington, operated a Studebaker agency and did general repairs on all makes of cars. Colfax was a tiny town then (population 2,800) and remains so today, yet its more notable natives include Hollywood actor and stuntman Yakima Canutt, Turner Classic Movie channel host Robert Osborne and novelist Kate Bigelow Montague.
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A fairly typical Ford agency had a clean, well-equipped back shop in 1924. The Fordson tractor tucked behind the Model T was also typical, because Henry insisted that all dealers stock them whether they were in farm country or not.
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Not all car repairs were done in shops. These two mechanics preferred the weather protection of their front porch. The sidecurtained top on the Model T at the right appears to be touching the porch roof.
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This shop in Minnesota looks a lot like my garage – messy but thoroughly comfortable. There’s a stove against the back wall, and the mechanic is using a piece of cardboard for a creeper. He also has a hammer in his hand, so pity the poor Chevrolet.
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Two young backyard mechanics work on their 1940 Ford, but I really can’t figure out what they’re trying to do. They’ve cut holes in each front fender and apparently routed the exhaust pipes through them, facing forward. Are you guys nuts?
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This appears to be some sort of gag shot, because the piston and crankshaft in the foreground have nothing to do with the lovely 1940 De Soto convertible. Besides, the two teenagers look way too clean to be working on a car.
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Two female mechanics in identical caps and overalls just did a lube job on this 1948 Hudson. Now they’re checking under the hood to be sure all the fluids are topped up, including the oil in the air cleaner. You can see the lift beneath the front bumper, and the tank-like tower on the left is a rolling pneumatic grease gun.
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Some shops do general repairs, others specialize. Don’s Citroen Service in Santa Monica, California, definitely specialized and seems to have plenty of work.
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And here’s the garage where I’d like to have worked in the 1950s. It’s Ernie McAfee’s Ferrari store in Hollywood. According to Jim Sitz, who used to go there, Ernie raced the blue 750 Monza (foreground) during 1955 and sold it in 1956 to Temple Buell in Denver for Masten Gregory to drive. The car at the right is a Siata.