Last month Jim wrote about car badges. This led to some discussion about the quite obscure subject of car dealership badges.
On new cars in 2019 I see many forms of advertising from selling dealers including: small decals or cheap plastic badges for the deck lid; strip decals for the backlite; plastic license plate frames; plastic license plate ads attached to the front of cars in states where two plates are not required. They are all tacky and I don’t want them on my car. But that’s another story.
Back in the 1970s and earlier, car dealers marked their sold cars with small die cast metal badges screwed onto the deck lid or tailgate.
Some supplier created these for the dealer and must have had both a design department and the ability to do specialty casting for the desired badge.
Some of the badges could be considered creative – see the VW one here.
Ed Carroll is the only one of these still in business under the same name, and now has a combination VW, Audi, and Porsche dealership all in one spot in the middle of Fort Collins, CO.
They were common but now they are purely historic; it seems unlikely that a current dealer would go to the trouble or expense of creating something like this.
These old badges can easily be found in junkyards and at car flea markets.
Burt sold Chevrolets in the Denver area and expanded into Toyotas and Subarus, eventually becoming the largest Hispanic-owned business in the country after a young employee started buying into the business and over time taking full ownership under the Burt name before himself selling a few years ago. Burt Subaru was the largest Subaru dealer in the nation for 19 years, the Toyota operation was the largest of its kind in Denver, and the original Chevrolet store was the largest of its kind in the Rocky Mountain area for many years.
The ones I’m illustrating were gathered on periodic trips to one or the other. I find them attractive and evocative of a different time of local, family owned car dealerships that is now just a memory.
Olsen was originated by Stan Olsen. He started with a Ford dealership in Walnut, Iowa. In 1958 he opened an Omaha Pontiac store and became, with his radio ad jingle, “Stan, Stan the Pontiac Man”. Then came Volkswagen and eventually Olsen sold many brands of imported cars.
I used one of those I’m showing to lend just a bit of authenticity to an old car I had. Walton Motor Company was the local Ford dealer at the time the car was new. My LTD had no badge when I bought it but I added this. The car is gone; the badge is on my garage wall.
What dealership badges do you have? Any story behind the badge or dealership? Add a photo of your favorites.
A legend regarding which dealer sold what and where follows this last picture…
Legend:
Photo 1: Capital in Denver, CO sold Chevrolet
Photo 2: Ronald Rice in Abilene, KS also sold Chevrolet
Photo 3: Purdy Ford, Fort Lupton, CO
Photo 4: Bill Dreiling Buick, Denver, CO
Photo 5: Ed Carroll VW, Fort Collins, CO
Photo 6: Empire Oldsmobile, Denver, CO
Photo 7: Burt Chevrolet, Englewood (Denver), CO
Photo 8: Olsen Pontiac, Omaha, NE
Photo 9: Walton Motor Company in Cheyenne, WY sold Ford
Photo 10: Yerbic in Greeley, CO sold AMC
Photo 11: Fuller in Ogallala, NE sold Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac and GMC
Photo 12: Kizzier Chevrolet, Scottsbluff, NE
These were not common in California, despite the reduced risk of rust from haphazardly drilled holes and cheap steel fasteners, here as opposed to the Midwest or NE where I think they were more common. The one exception I remember from childhood was Ellis Brooks Chevrolet in San Francisco.
Luckily for that since those holes always lead to rust particularly at the back edge of the trunk lid. Just look at a Mustang with MUSTANG spelled out on the trunk. When I got mine there was only one real rust issue and that was the trunk lid even though a California car since 1970.
Our dealers used plates to proclaim their name as per the example below from the front of my Cougar. Yes, not mounted on my car as it has been off since 1975. If they were still used I would let the dealer know, in no uncertain terms, that if one is put on my car then it will be refused.
I have a 1958 Chev YEOMAN, 2 Dr. wagon that was sold new at ELLIS BROOKS. I have the broken badge, and 2 NEW ones from ELLIS BROOKS. Must of been a great time driving back then.
I wonder about the prep guys responsible for drilling/attaching these. I mean, it seems like it wouldn’t be too tough to misalign the holes and end up with a really lame, crooked, ‘permanent’ emblem.
Any smart shop would make up a jig to ensure consistent hole placement.
That’s an interesting question. These badges were always straight, and always mounted in a good visible location.
It’s not easy to see or measure a horizontal line on a raised trunk lid!
Did the dealers have templates or jigs for the mounting holes?
An adjustable jig sounds like the most plausible answer.
In fact, maybe this is an explanation as to why these metal, permanent emblems went away. If the jig was lost or broken, maybe a replacement jig was unavailable or too expensive to obtain. Without the jig, I can’t imagine any dealer trusting the attacher to ‘eyeball’ the emblem to position it correctly.
On another note, at least one dealer (Paul Miller Ford in Lexington, KY) would actually attach one emblem on each of the front fenders of their trucks just above the ‘F-150’ Ford emblem. I don’t think the tailgate got one, too, but who knows.
That reminds me… when I bought a Kia Sedona last year, I noticed that the front license plate frame was installed crooked. Very subtle, and in fact I didn’t even notice until a few weeks after I bought it, but once I noticed, I couldn’t un-see it.
Last month someone hit the front bumper — I needed to get the bumper repainted, and I asked the body shop if they could straighten the license plate. They did (for no charge), and thankfully that annoyance is now gone!
Echo that. Wonky badges and licence plates really wind me up, or amuse me if it’s a vanity plate
Good prep guys put them on by eye. I worked in several dealerships and no one used a template, ever.
Another badge from the past that I used to see a lot when I lived in Missouri was a step bumper with the dealer name on it since the rear bumper used to be optional on pickups.
I don’t recall any of our cars from the 70s and 80s having metal badges. We lived in NY and bought imports and they had either a decal or a plastic license frame for dealer identity.
Yeah those were popular in Kansas too.
Arkansas too – the dealer bumpers with that diamond or x-pattern were usually painted white or were chrome plated, with the dealer’s name highlighted in paint
It was stenciled rather than stamped on my dad’s ’79 C10 but the step bumper needed repainting two years in and annually after that so the dealer advertising didn’t last long.
I have not seen an automobile or truck with a die cast metal badge for years; all the badges I see on vehicles now are either vinyl lettering or customized license plate holders-for cost reasons I assume. If I do see a metal dealer badge on a vehicle it’s always on from the 1950’s-60’s era.
I generally loathe dealership badging on cars, but past a certain age, they tend to be like artwork. This collection is wonderful.
Our 1995 Thunderbird has its original dealer badge — it’s plastic and glued on (instead of screwed-in), but it was clearly designed to resemble the old-style badges. My wife bought this car new from Bo Beuckman Ford in St. Louis… she wasn’t thrilled to have the badge put on there, but decided not to make a fuss over it. Now, at nearly 25 years old, I like it on there.
I bought a used pickup a few days ago and it has no less than seven dealer markings: four mud flaps, a sticker on the tailgate, a sticker on the rear window and a front license plate. The plate will be replaced when the real plates arrive. I am going to get out the WD-40 to get the stickers off. Maybe some black spray paint for the mud flaps?
Oh, hey, what a keen topic—and I recognise many of the depicted dealership names, for I grew up near Denver.
And badges like this what you show are why, as a kid, I was kind of confused between “Burt Subaru” and “Subaru Brat”. That was not my only point of confusion on matters of this nature; when I was little and used to see car dealerships with names like “Burt Chevrolet”, I thought it was like royalty: you had to be born into the family to sell the cars.
Other Denver-area dealerships with names, stories, or logos distinctive enough to remember:
• Skyline Dodge—some big scandal took ’em out in the ’80s; I don’t recall the details.
• Goodro Ford, whose livery looked like a Doritos bag (photo below). Looks like Goodro also had a Plymouth store with its own nifty livery.
• Ralph Schomp Honda (think they had other-brand stores, too, didn’t they?)
• Cherry Creek Dodge (“NOBODY BEATS A DEALIN’ DOUG DEAL—NOBODY!!!!”)
• Emich Oldsmobile (definitely had other-brand stores)
• Deane Buick
• Ford Acres, whose logo duplicated Ford’s own
• Jerry Roth Chevrolet
With all of that said, I have a philosophical objection to dealership badges, decals, licence plate frames, etc. Y’want me to advertise your business, bub, you’re going to freakin’ pay me monthly—and your drilling holes in my property is NO.
“And badges like this what you show are why, as a kid, I was kind of confused between “Burt Subaru” and “Subaru Brat”.”
Phoenix is home to a dealer called “Van Chevrolet”. If you buy an Express, you have a “Van Chevrolet Van”.
Thanks for the photo of the Goodro Ford decal. It is only the second I’ve found. I’m working up courage to put one on my Mustang, which was from that dealer.
Saw this one a few weeks ago on a 1960 Vauxhall.
I don’t have one that I can show but I do have a story about one. In 1973, I worked in the body shop of “Jerry’s Beltway” Chevrolet in Perry Hall, MD. A sociology professor from nearby Towson University bought a brand new dark green ’73 Corvette and told the sales man, “No dealer badge!” Of course the new car get-ready dept. screwed one of those ugly pot metal badges onto the back of the Vette, right above the license plate.
I got the call to come to the showroom, take the car back to the body shop, take the badge off and get it fixed.
It’s great nostalgia to see these but I’m glad they are no longer used.
This falls into the same category as “no holes in the front bumper for a license plate”. Of course, they invariably do exactly that.
Alignment of the badges on the car: The son of the onetime owner of the former Fuller dealership at Ogallala told me that one of his jobs as a teenager was putting these badges on the dealer’s inventory. The first thing he told me about their badges was how very particular his father was about the perfect/correct alignment of the part on a car. He also said that on the larger GMC trucks – the more industrial or agricultural ones – two badges were mounted. They went on each side of the truck high on the cowl – below the windshield and about even with the firewall.
I worked for Barrie Cadillac/Oldsmobile on Long Island, NY back in the 60s, between high school and Vietnam. And yes, one of my jobs was to drill 2 holes in the trunk lid of each new car. No templates or jigs, just eye-em-up. “Most” of them went on pretty straight-ish.
Now that I’m thinking about it, there were two sizes, the larger Barrie script was for Oldsmobiles and the smaller one was for Cadillacs. Not sure I ever knew why.
Interesting — thanks for your input!
The best one I’ve ever seen: Richmond’s Cadillac dealer north of the James River is Moore Cadillac, which has been there for ages. His die cast dealer badge (still used today) is “A Moore” in the exact same font as the Cadillac script on the rear deck for decades. Mounted right above, it said “A Moore Cadillac” and looked like it came from the factory that way.
And I’ve never seen one put on crooked – at least on the Cadillacs that had the old script. I notice they don’t care quite as much on the newer models where the script has changed, and he’s also taken on the Subaru franchise. Unfortunately, he still uses the same dealer tag, which looks pathetic on a Subaru.
We didn’t have much of this in Australia, the only one I can remember is the one from BS Stillwell Ford in Melbourne, it was used in the 70s.
They didn’t need holes in the bodywork as they were glued on.
I have one somewhere, can’t find it now after a house move, they are extremely poor quality diecast, you can bend them easily.
Fantastic article, I loved it! I really like the old dealer tags. It never occurred to me to collect them off of junkyard cars. I wish I would have thought of that years ago when they were more common on the older cars you’d see in yards.
I have mixed feelings about dealer tags on cars I own. On the one hand, I like them. I had a couple 70’s cars in the 80’s and 90’s that had the old style badges. I loved that the dealership would put it’s city (and state if it was a small town) so you could see where cars originated from. It’s especially handy if you are used car shopping and want to easily see where the car came from. When current dealers do that on their stickers, I appreciate it. It is just fun to see where cars came from. Having the location also displays some local pride, which I think is neat. And a well-designed dealer tag shows pride in the business, which is also neat. I would have no problem with a tastefully done dealer sticker that has the city on any car of mine.
On the other hand, many are not particularly tasteful and many don’t have the location. Many dealers don’t even have anything, which I think shows a disheartening lack of pride in both their business and their city. Many people these days don’t like to have them on their cars, so I suppose it’s a business decision. Maybe if more dealers had attractive, tasteful stickers, more people would be comfortable with them on the car. I have not bought a new car from any place that had good stickers, so I haven’t had a sticker on my cars in years.
Thanks for the good article!
A great collection!
I question if dealers cared about the quality of these metal badges being up to reasonable OEM standards by the 60s and 70s? These metal badges were becoming rare when I was a little kid, but the ones I do recall from the 70s were often tarnished and pitted due to salt, environmental exposure, etc. Often looking prematurely worn, greater than the state of the car. Or worse, with rust streaks beneath the drill holes, or loose fasteners causing the badge to list to one side. Or rattle. No wonder many buyers wanted no part of them by then.
I’m with Daniel M – most cars when I was a kid got a shiny sticker. The metal ones seemed old fashioned and got pitted way before the rest of the chrome on the car.
I love your examples.
Working inventory on a large dealership lot of different dealership badges. They’re usually easy to remove, except for the ones that have a mirror finish to them. I have seen a metal one lately from a Cadillac dealer. I can’t recall the name, but it’s a simple rectangular design, always affixed on the bottom right of the trunk lid. Detail is supposed to remove them, but either they think it’s a special edition plaque (I did at first), or they’re afraid of damaging the paint. I’m sure they’re just glued on, but they’re on there…good. I’ve decided to leave them, as they only display the dealer’s name, not the brand. We’re a Chevy dealership.
One problem I have with our detail department is the placement of our badge. They can’t seem to standardize placenta location. I understand we sell a lot of used cars of varying makes xx and models (over 200 a month), but for example I’ll see late model Impalas stickered on the lower left of the trunk lid, on the upper left, and then also on the bumper cover. The GSM doesn’t care, as long as it’s somewhere. And we do the rear plate frames and front plates, too, if there’s a mounting bracket. I amazes me the number of trades that come in with all these easily removable marketing devices from various dealers still affixed years later.
Not to forget Max Hoffman, one of the most important car dealers of all times. He brought VW Beetle, Porsche 356, Jaguar and Mercedes to America. Google says that some guys are selling a remake of the Hoffman badge. I don`t like that, soon classic cars will show up which were not sold by Hoffman.
Sorry to hear about the knockoff badges. It was a sad day six years ago when they demolished the Hoffman auto showroom on Park Avenue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I agree, Mr. Hoffman was a phenomenon in the auto business. Mr. Wright obtained some of the many fine cars in his collection from this commission and his relationship with Mr. Hoffman.
https://hyperallergic.com/69023/the-shocking-demolition-of-frank-lloyd-wrights-park-avenue-showroom/
I don’t have any of the Badges, but I do have a plate frame from the original selling dealer of my Scout Cab Top. While the plate frames immediately come off of vehicles I buy I’m very happy that my friend’s Grandfather left it on the Scout and he did too. I guess it helps that it was from a time when plates were “permanent”, before we went away from the simple green on white and before they finally required people to retire them. So I’d hazzard a guess that the plates had not been off the vehicle since it was new, until I was forced to switch to the new style.
There’s something of a cottage industry reproducing the dealer stickers of some of the more famous sixties’ musclecar dealerships, such as Royal Pontiac, Nickey and Yenko Chevrolet, Mr. Norm’s Grand Spaulding Dodge, and Tasca Ford.
One of the Ford dealers in a small town near here was putting on this style of badge, complete with script name and ’50s-style Ford shield logo, into the mid ’90s. They’re still in business but must have either exhausted their supply or received orders from Dearborn not to drill any more holes in trunklids and tailgates.
I grew up in Colorado and remember all of those dealer badges, having seen them on many vehicles in the area. I even remember the Cheyenne, Wyoming one from Walton which sold Ford. If anyone has a picture of one from Dineen Lincoln-Mercury in Cheyenne, WY, or a Spedding Chevrolet example from Denver, I’d love to see them.
First thing I do when I get home with the latest acquisition is remove the dealer sticker. The last time it was some sort of raised plastic vinyl thing but was still easy to peel off. I noted that water had already started to creep down under the sticker, making it easier to remove.
I see the interesting social history here; there was a time when nearly every dealer did this without consent/protest, and then gradually it went away. Everything seems to be plastic/stick-on now, but I wonder how recently some dealer—with a few still in inventory–was still screwing/riveting these on?
Lots of dealership badges on eBay today, with some familiar names among them. Growing up in NE OH, Spitzer was the first dealer I’d heard of that sold multiple makes, which seemed oddly disloyal or something: “Spitzer Ford,” “Spitzer Chevrolet,” “Spitzer Chrysler.” So, these add-ons were ubiquitous in Greater Cleveland and beyond:
My God yes! The part of my family that wasn’t in Johnstown, PA was in Lakewood, OH. Given the number of Spitzer badges I’ve seen both in Ohio and nearby states, I’d always assumed they were the biggest Cleveland area dealership(s).
Syke, Del Spitzer (b. 1927) was all over Cleveland TV. If curious, here’s a great perspective on the man and his auto-retailing empire: http://www.clevelandseniors.com/people/delspitzer.htm
Hey, I have one of those!
Subay Motors in Gloucester, MA still does the metal dealer ads on the vehicles that it sells.
This is the only badge on my cars. I had it re-installed after painting the car, and the dealership went to glue-on stickers shortly after. Sorry about the mess, as the car was oiled last fall, and I didn’t get a chance at cleaning up the area prior to the photo.
“Olsen was originated by Stan Olsen. He started with a Ford dealership in Walnut, Iowa. In 1958 he opened an Omaha Pontiac store and became, with his radio ad jingle, “Stan, Stan the Pontiac Man”. Then came Volkswagen and eventually Olsen sold many brands of imported cars.”
The first VW dealership in the Midwest was located across the river from Omaha in nearby Council Bluffs, IA. Sayers Volkswagen started operations in the early 1960s; the owner, Harry Sayers, was my step-grandfather. I believe Olsen purchased the franchise from Tim O’Neill, who had taken over Sayers VW in the 1980s.
Such metal badges were common in Illinois, where I grew up. I used to wonder why anyone would agree to provide free advertising for a dealership that more than likely wouldn’t lift a finger for them post-sale. Besides, they were one more place to invite rust.
This is the most stylish dealer badge I have seen. I saw it yesterday on a ’69 Eldorado at Hershey. Sewell Cadillac is still in business in Dallas.
In my area, my sense is that some dealers were still using these badges, the glue-on versions anyway, at least into the ’90s, maybe even beyond. Boch, a big multi-brand dealer in the Boston area, was one of them.
I have only one of these: a badge from Bancroft Chrysler-Plymouth in Worcester, Mass., which was originally on a 1987 Plymouth Sundance my parents bought new, and which I ended up with for a while in the late 1990s. Bancroft was an old dealer in the city’s downtown, who had also picked up a Datsun/Nissan franchise somewhere along the line, and would later be given a Jeep franchise by Chrysler. The dealership no longer exists, although I believe the Nissan franchise was sold to someone else who still has it, at a different location and under a different name.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the big Chevrolet dealer in the area was called United Chevrolet; I believe they went out of business in the early ’80s. At classic car shows, you still see a few old Chevys here and there wearing United badges.
My 77 Chevelle sedan still proudly wears it’s plastic Bill McKay Chevrolet – Fort Worth, TX tag, it’s fallen off once, and I stuck it back on, and repainted it. My 2004 Buick does not have any dealer badging, neither did any of my other cars, save for the 76 Chevelle sedan, which wore it’s pot metal chromed Doran Chevrolet, Dallas TX from day 1 to 24 years later when I removed it after I junked it.
While these emblems were extremely rare in California, dealer license plate frames have been around seemingly forever. Felix Chevrolet, after 95 years has to be one of the oldest dealerships still in existence.
Mom’s 1972 Buick came from El Paso and had the dealer emblem attached to the trunk lid. Car is gone now and I don’t remember the dealership name.
In the late 60s my father in small-town Arkansas bought a unibody Ford pickup from a friend in town that had been purchased at Moore Ford in Little Rock. Like all of their vehicles, it carried a decal centered low on the rear window, “One Moore Ford”.
My 1964 Thunderbird did not come from Remund Ford, Mandan ND, but it is local to me and the correct era for the car. I found and bought the emblem on eBay. I attached it with trim mounting tape so as not to drill holes in the trunk lid.
What about dealer license plates? A mechanic in town has this collection on his garage wall:
Hello, looking for the following 2 trunk emblems from 2 different Lincoln- Mercury dealerships that has been out of business since the 80’s. Any help would be great. O’Brien and Rohall Inc. from Arlington, VA and Pascal Dilday Inc. San Diego, CA. Thank you in advance.
I live where the Kizzier one is from
he had a brother in Kearney, NE!
so here is the badge
I’d love to get that Ed Carroll one
do have a bunch from West Nebraska & a few from Colorado & other places
& always looking for more