JC Whitney. There, I said it – Get all the chuckles out of your system now, because this COAL contains the story of how I ended up working for the most beloved and most maligned automotive aftermarket resellers.
It’s been a few COALs since last we checked in on professional life, so lets quickly recap: After working various consulting gigs doing software and web development, I soft landed the dot net crash at Stylin Concepts in 2002. Stylin Concepts was a small but highly successful reseller of aftermarket truck accessories, and I was the main driving force behind their web presence.
And sometimes that literally meant driving. One time I needed to rack some servers at the colo where we hosted the web site, and the owner of the company tossed me the keys to his brand new Lincoln Aviator to transport the equipment. After turning the A/C down to my preferred 68 degrees, I noticed by the heated seat controls this strange blue setting. What is this? I tried it out. Chilled air blowing out through the perforations in the seat? Oh, what bliss! I think I just discovered the single most wonderful automotive feature ever! I vowed right then and there one day to have this feature on my car.
Business was good at Stylin Concepts: We were riding high on the SUV and truck customization craze. Somewhere along the line, we rebranded ourselves Stylin Trucks, which more accurate reflected our business and sounded less like a hair salon. More importantly, in 2003 the business was acquired by The Riverside Company, a private equity firm. At the time, Riverside also owned JC Whitney, and the idea was to make us sibling companies. While we consolidated distribution to Whitney’s enormous LaSalle, Illinois distribution center, we kept the businesses largely separate, at least at first.
That would soon change, and I was soon offered a promotion to the corporate mothership: Director of Infrastructure and Operations for Whitney Automotive Group (WAG), the parent holding company of both JC Whitney and Stylin Trucks, along with a commensurate increase in compensation. While I would remain based out of Cleveland, I would now be managing resources out of Chicago, and travelling back and forth to the Windy City 1-2 days per week.
I decided to reward myself, as always, with an automotive upgrade. No more compromises, as the Jetta and Mazda 3 had been. I wanted it all: a V6, all wheel drive, lots of gadgets, and, most importantly, those delightful cooled seats. In short, I wanted my A4 back. The entry-level luxury sedan market was (and still is) chock-a-block full of excellent cars. BMW 3-series, Mercedes C-class, and of course my old friend the Audi A4 just to name a few. But since you’ve already read the title of this article, you know where I’m going to end up.
Just look at that minimal front overhang
For reasons that I can’t quite articulate any more, I was drawn to the Lexus IS over the German triumvirate. I was smitten with the Lexus L-Finesse design language, which I still think is superior to the current spindle grille look that Lexus has. I liked the fact that its bones were built upon a RWD platform, and not a FWD platform like the A4. If you are not sure why that matters if you are getting AWD, compare the amount of front overhang on an IS or BMW with that of a FWD car and get back to me.
The IS had my precious ventilated seats, which at the time were unavailable in the competition. It also still offered a V6 as its entry-level engine, at a time when Audi and Mercedes were offering 4-bangers. The promise of Toyota reliability was reassuring after reading a steady stream of horror stories about BMW, Audi, and Mercedes reliability on the internet.
I had finally clawed my way out of the minors to the big leagues. JC frickin’ Whitney! The company that everyone loves to mock, but that everyone secretly buys from. Chicago is a wonderful city in ways that Cleveland could never be, as Joseph Dennis can surely attest to. And WAG was right in the heart of it, at the corner of Michican Ave. and Wacker Drive, at the doorstep to the Magnificant Mile. I hit all the landmarks: The Billy Goat Tavern, Pizzaria Uno, Millenium Park. I walked or took the train everywhere, and never once did I feel unsafe. It was really a joyous time, and I loved every minute there.
I’ve got dozens of aerial photos like this in my collection.
One or two days per week, I would get up early in the morning, head to Cleveland Hopkins airport, and hop on a Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago. A little less than an hour later, I would be touching down at Midway, where I would hop on the Orange Line for a brief 25 minute ride downtown to the State/Lake station. I can still rattle off the Orange Line stops by heart: Pulaski, Kedzie, Western, 35th/Archer, and so on. Then around 4pm I would reverse the process, until I ended up back at home at 8 or 9:00 PM. This would be my routine for several years.
Ryan (left) and Josh awaiting a trip on my favorite airline in 2009
I had amassed so many flights on Southwest that I scored their exclusive companion pass, which allows a passenger to fly free with you anywhere you went. I would sometimes bring my wife Kristen with me to Chicago on overnight trips. But like George Clooney in Up In The Air, I soon found out that it is a trap. When vacation time rolled around, the last thing I wanted to do was get in a plane, since I already spent hundreds of hours a year flying, and the plane had essentially become my office. So when we went of family vacation, more often than not, we drove, and I gave away some of my free flights to relatives. That said, I developed a love for Southwest: To this day, Southwest is still my favorite airline.
I ended up getting the IS 250, mainly because the IS 350 was not available with all wheel drive at the time. While the extra power from the 350 would have been nice, the 250 was plenty quick for me, and the extra traction in the winter more than made up for the extra power in the summer.
One of the first things I noticed about the IS 250 when the weather got warm is that there is a difference between ventilated seats and cooled seats. Ventilated seats just have blowers to blow ambient air through the seat perforations (or draw it through, depending on the direction of airflow). While certainly better than nothing, it was no substitute for air-conditioned seats, which either draw air from the car’s air conditioning system, or sport their own solid state chillers as seen on more recent cars. Blerg! I guess true air-conditioned seats will need to wait for a future ride.
Other nits with the Lexus were extremely minor: The standard 17″ wheels and tire were a bit small for a car of this class, and didn’t really fill out the wheel-wells (18-inchers were standard the IS 350). The all wheel drive hardware intruded greatly into the driver’s footwell, making the accelerator pedal somewhat awkward to engage. Obviously the floor pan was designed with the Japanese market in mind, as there was plenty of space in the passenger footwell (which would be the driver’s side in Japan).
Also, the brakes shed copious amounts of brake dust. As in “the wheels were almost black after a week” kind of brake dust. At the 5K service, the dealer switched out the pads to less dusty ones (free of charge), but warned me that the stopping power may not be as good. I noticed no difference after the change (in stopping power, that is. The brake dust situation was much improved).
Storm clouds were brewing at WAG. Without realizing it, Stylin and JC Whitney were largely chasing the same customers. Truck accessories counted for a significant portion of the sales at JC Whitney, and obviously at Stylin Trucks. While were making good money selling tonneau covers, tube steps, and video systems to truck and SUV owners, the OEMs soon caught wind of all these high-margin dollars being spent outside of their showrooms. Manufacturers soon started upping their game by offering many of the items that we were selling direct to customers as either factory options or as dealer installed accessories. Offering these items with a full factory warranty and rolling them into your monthly payment for a few extra bucks a month was a direct assault at our core business, and one we couldn’t really figure out how to compete with.
There were other headwinds: The one-two punch of gas prices approaching $4.00 per gallon and the economic collapse of 2008 combined to kill new truck sales. The only saving grace was that people were doing more to keep their existing cars and trucks running, which worked to our favor. Once again, I found myself working for a company that was financially on the ropes. What happens? You’ll have to wait and see. However, I will have much more to say about JC Whitney in a future post, so keep your eyes peeled.
“The company that everyone loves to mock, but that everyone secretly buys from.”
I thought that was Radio Shack’s slogan ?
Except for the buying part…
I was more or less referring to Radio Shack in the ’70s and ’80s. Since the 1990s It’s become more of a cellphone and toy store.
If ever there was an example of a company that ended up 180 degrees from where they needed to be. They could’ve been in on the ground floor of the maker movement and occupying a unique niche. Instead, they focused on what ended up to be the most competitive part of their traditional field and paying medium-size-retail store rent while being a glorified mall kiosk.
Yep, Ironically they were ahead in the “maker” scene Before that term existed. At one time you could get all of the parts to build just about anything electonic, or if you didn’t want to pick the parts separately, just buy a kit. And the staff was very knowledgeable, No matter how obscure of a project you had in mind, they were able to assist. Since originally it was a shop for amateur radio operators who were used to “home brewing” their gear, that made sense. Once electronics became ordinary appliances, they became just another cheap stereo retailer. Sad that they didn’t see what they had.
180 degrees you say? Only time will tell, but both Sears and JC Penny are right up there as examples of what not to do to adapt to the changing marketplace.
Sears might implode, but for different reasons than the decline of Radio Shack. Sears may have been dominant at one time, but they were in a competitive market with JC Penney, Montgomery Wards, ETC. Price competition from below like Target, Wal Mart, etc racked not only mid range discounters like Sears, but even higher priced retailers like Gimbles and now Macy’s. Also Sears got major sales from appliences (almost everything in our house that was painted white with a plug attached was from Sears when I was a kid) Now Best Buy and the “home improvement” stores dominate that arena.
Radios Shack not only sold radios,TVs and record players, but sold electonic components and gear to the mass consumer that otherwise was only available wholesale to industry or repair shops.(Unless you were in a major city that had an electronics industry and you could find these specialty dealers). In that regard they were almost unique. Olsen Electonics was the only thing that was close. (I was a lucky nerd as I lived near an RS and an Olsen’s!) Today. naturally we can get anything online, but being able to go a half a mile and get a 555 IC timer, 12BA6 vacuum tube, RF modulator and 2meter ham receiver in the same trip was unique and not something you could do at Sears, JCP or Kmart.
Tom, That is a tough commute, even at one or two times a week. And you did it for years.
I can relate to the miles-earned trap. When I lived in NYC and had to go to Burbank for my Columbia Pictures/Coca Cola job, I ended up giving my TWA miles to my parents. Taking a cab to the swoopy Eero Saarinen designed terminal at JFK at 5 A.M. on Mondays got old fast.
(TWA, gone since 2001 … seems like it was just yesterday.)
And I was very proud of the red J C Whitney seat covers I installed in 1970 in my 1964 VW bug. Good quality stuff by mail order.
Regarding the unexpected consequences of the company merger, this is a familiar concept to many employees who were told that big mergers would make their companies more successful. The end results were initially big merger paydays for the management of the new combined company followed by massive layoffs to reduce “redundancies”, corporate infighting over limited resources, more layoffs, lower stock values, increase competition from smaller more flexible companies, more layoffs, execution of management’s golden parachutes, and finally corporate spin offs to focus on the company’s “core competencies”.
Can anyone point to a long term successful corporate merger?
Thanks for the IS write up. I never knew much about these as I only saw Lexus as maker of the LS, the ES, and the official vehicle of Basking Ridge NJ, the RX.
Success for the shareholders, for the employees, for the company, or for the customers? 😉
Until it was driven into the bankruptcy ditch I’d say that all the companies William C. Durant bought up to make GM was a pretty successful merger. I doubt all those companies would have survived the Great Depression if they hadn’t been together.
Good point. And if the Great Depression wasn’t bad enough, the 1950s and 1960s killed off most of the remaining independent auto makers while the merged GM giant was in its glory years.
There wouldn’t be many off the top of my head – Burroughs and Sperry to make Unisys. In my personal experience the workers end up on the losing side.
You bring up a good point. The IT world is littered with failed mergers and acquisitions (Compaq, Digital, Nokia, Sun, just to name a few). Since the success rates are so low, it seems odd that mergers and acquisitions are pursued so aggressively.
Facebook buying Instagram. It seems to be serving as an effective counterfoil to Snapchat, as well as attending to its own core constituency. Only five years though (is that an eternity in internet-speak?)
I am in full agreement with you about ventilated seats. They’re simply a brilliant idea and very easy to get used to. I wasn’t aware of the distinction between cooled and ventilated… I need to stop using those terms interchangeably. I can tell you the current GS uses ventilated seats as, if you lean off of the seat back, you can hear the air pumping through the perforations. Very nice.
I need to drive a Lexus with regular suspension tune. The GS F-Sport I rented was a disappointment, being too firm and yet not poised enough. I’d sacrifice some agility for greater ride comfort but the CTS I also rented followed the advice of that little Mexican girl from the TV commercials. “Why not both?”
The GS was also quite a large-feeling car. I’ve always wanted to drive an IS to see how it feels. And as much as I liked the looks of your generation, I’m actually a huge fan of the current IS. Spindle grille and all…
I’m familiar with the shortcoming of Lexus’ “ventilated” seats from this era (I’m not sure if they’ve improved in the last ten or so years), and there are some solutions.
Merely turning on the ventilated seats only activates a fan beneath the seat, and not a powerful one. However, if the AC is cranked, some of the colder air that is directed to the rear seats via the vent beneath the front seats will get pushed through.
A simple solution to magnify this effect is to fold your rear seat floor mat so that it covers the gap between the front seat and the car floor. This effectively traps the cold air, and the only place for it to go is up through the seats. Some folks have even fashioned boxes out of sheet metal to permanently place beneath the seat to redirect cold air in this fashion.
Re: JC Whitney / Warshawsky
They both had a catalog to thumb thru and I rem. that W-sky had lower prices on the same items page for page..
I really enjoyed going to their store located at State St. and Archer in Chi. back in the 1960s thru the 1980s. It was like a car guys junk shop with 100s of items to rummage thru,there was also a catalog/phone order desk to place or pick up orders. I purchased several items there back then, they offered a huge selection like no other. I rem. a few times I had to go to what they called the tower at 2200 Throop St. a couple of miles away to pick up not available in store stock. In later years their parking lot across the Street was fenced-in with a guard on duty stationed in a little shanty. The area became dangerous, I believe that was the reason they moved 90 miles west to LaSalle, IL.
I went there a few times but it was not the same, too neat and orderly with very little on display to fondle.
By then Warshawsky was no longer part of the company. He was a classic Packard collector that died several years ago, his rare collection was auctioned off…….
JC Whitney always struck me as a purveyor of cheaply produced copies of car and truck parts, though I never gave much thought to who or where these parts were produced. And when you say StylinConcepts merged with JCW, I think of a merger along the lines of Cadillac and (pre-Hyundai) Kia. And as far as the folks who worked at JCW, I envisioned 2 or 3 older, paunchy, cigar smoking, men in a dimly lit and very dusty warehouse.
But enough about that, I always thought that the idea of a valid Japanese counterpoint to the 3 series BMW was a good one. I’ll never be in the position to own one, and I’m not sure I would want to own any of the “spindle-faced” models, but for folks who want one it’s a pretty good effort.
“JC Whitney always struck me as a purveyor of cheaply produced copies of car and truck parts”
Unfortunately many folks felt this way. If you knew what to buy though you could get some deals. Rockwell Automotive and Moog suspension components, VDO and Autometer guages, Fairbanks trans kits and Isky camshafts.. And on and on.
I still trek out to LaSalle once a year for the Whitney car show (5-07-17).
Yeppers!?
Nice “twofer” a little bit of a car review and car business.
The old IS with 6 inline engine was a joy to drive, but it also got the deficiency for not being originally designed for US market. The next IS was introduced with much fanfare, its 3.5 liter engine had two fuel injectors which I never figure out the reason. However its real short coming was to compete directly against BMW 3 series with its aging client base who migrated to Lexus from Lincolns, Biuck, Olds and Cadillac. With leasing instead of owning, BMW beat Lexus easily. By the way, Lexus IS is not super reliable as Camry, co worker son owned one and had several non start due to somewhere keep draining battery __ dealer never figured out, his solution is to drive the car every day, he also replaced the complete exhausted system after 5 years.
I liked this generation of IS a lot when it came out (though not as much as the funkier 1st generation), and it still looks good to me. I know a lot of people will say this is a too-generic shape for the segment, but I’m right there with you on the glory of the short front overhang.
Whenever I see one of these cars I always think of the (great) final scene of The Sopranos finale. Don’t stop believing!
What a journey this IS series progressed from, and it really is amazing how different these were compared to their predecessor. Series one (the Altezza in Japan) was the product of famed AE86 engineer Nobuaki Katayama, and was first and foremost intended as a credible sport sedan. These top end Altezzas were 3S-GE 2.0 four cylinder cars that produced 200 horsepower; vastly different to the 3.0 2JZ-GE 1-6 Lexus IS we received here in the US (the only Altezza to share the 3.0 2JZ-GE was the auto-only Gita wagon). Market position in Japan was substantially different as well; intended to replace the Celica based Carina ED and Corona Exiv hardtop sedans, they were not positioned as a BMW/Mercedes competitor whatsoever. These facts obviously did not translate well when rebranded as a Lexus. Too small, too cheap. I’d argue the 1-6 could even be seen as a retrograde step, as the final variations of the 3S-GE were easily seen as peers to Honda’s B-series Vtec fours in their day. It was also much more likely to see a Japanese Altezza equipped with Alcantara upholstery versus Lexus leather.
All that changed for the second generation. The introduction of Lexus to Japan meant the Altezza was no more, and was now concurrent with the IS series worldwide. The new vehicle was positioned conderably higher up in the home market, and sales both there and here increased considerably. I still like both, and the current third generation seems to blend the best of the previous two. I’d take any generation happily.
I was smitten with the Lexus L-Finesse design language, which I still think is superior to the current spindle grille look that Lexus has.
Spindle grill is a nice way of putting it. I’ve always thought of it more as an angry catfish.
An invention who’s time has come and gone but needs to make a comeback…I give you the crotch vent ladies and gentlemen. Although my Avalon has vented seats they work well pulling air from the A/C vents under the front seats.
As an “older” guy who does most of his automotive news reading on CC now, I was surprised to learn that the IS now has a V6. I always thought its claim to fame was the inline 6 layout of the original IS250 … I guess I need to get out more! At least it’s still RWD.
And by the way, both my ’93 80-series Land Cruiser and my ’97 T100 pickup still had crotch vents. Though in both cases the AC was pretty weak.
Delta, American and well…United can only wish that they have the kind of customer loyalty that inspires the following statement.
“That said, I developed a love for Southwest: To this day, Southwest is still my favorite airline.”