1971-72
One of my favorite movie moments is from The Jerk, where Steve Martin is jumping up and down yelling, “The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!” And as hard as it is to believe, there was a time (1980) when getting the new phone book was a pretty big deal. Everyone had a land-line with a rat’s nest for a cord. Almost everyone had a stamped metal, Zephyr Autodesk “Vanguard Model” phone number directory, with the alphabetized sliding stylus and flip-up lid. And if you didn’t have the Zephyr, you just wrote down numbers in the first few pages of the new, free, phone book. Twenty something years after The Jerk, I felt a little silly paying five bucks a pop for some old phone books at the Antique Mall. But boy am I glad I did. My wife and I have gotten so much pleasure from our 1971-72 and 1976-77 Bellingham Telephone Directories, that I wouldn’t trade them for anything. So, sit back and enjoy some random car dealership ads from the seventies, and also a few from mid-century.
1976-77
Like many mid-sized cities, Bellingham, Wash. has an “auto row” where multiple car dealerships sit cheek by jowl, hawking their wares. But before these dealers moved to Iowa Street in the early 1970s, all of the main car lots were located right in the downtown core. Nowadays, when I look at the sprawling dealerships east of I-5, I can’t believe they ever could have done business downtown! Dewey Griffin, pictured at top, was one of the first to move from “Grand and Central” (downtown) to its present location on Iowa St. Chuck McCord Chevrolet, pictured above, bucked the trend by staying near the downtown core, in a large triangular lot with great visibility. I was at school with Chuck’s son Matt, and we had some good times cranking Van Halen in my ’66 Chevelle. Chuck McCord was a nice guy who I think also dabbled in real estate.
1976-77
Lest we forget our Kelvinator and Mopar friends, I found a great ad in the 1976-77 directory. Bellingham Auto Center never rang much of a bell with me, not because I didn’t like the Pacer (I did and I do), but because Auto Row was such a hive, our family mostly avoided it like the plague.
1976-77
Rothausen Volkswagen was housed in an A-Frame building that incorporated the VW logo into its design. It was located on Samish Way, which was the old “highway” through town before Interstate 5 was finished in the 1960s. My parents bought a brand-new 1978 Audi Fox GTI there, and my mom drove it for many years. It had the racing stripe down the hood, but Mom loved it anyway. My friend Jim worked at Rothausen and became an Audi addict (still not recovered). Another mechanic who worked there drove a hotted-up ’59 Beetle that would snap your head back when he shifted gears. I think the VW building is still there, but not as a car dealership.
Circa 1969-70
Before I shift gears into the Wayback Machine, I’m including a random newspaper clipping from about 1970, showing a slew of used station wagons for sale at Diehl Motors. This was our Ford dealership that had once been located downtown, but moved to a location near I-5. Diehl Ford was founded in 1908 and is said to be the third or fourth Ford dealership ever, and the oldest west of the Mississippi. In the clipping, the salespeople are listed at the bottom (with their own land-lines). My favorite is Buzz Rogers.
1950
Back in the ’80s I helped my mom clean out a little bungalow she had inherited from a beloved aunt and uncle. Along with some home-canned goods from 1948, one of the coolest things I found was a Bellingham Phone Book from 1950. It was in pretty much perfect shape and contained some really cool ads. The Nash dealership shown above advertised “fireproof storage,” mainly because the nearby Ford dealership had burned to the ground a couple of years before.
1950
In 1950, Charles Martin was selling Plymouth and Dodge at Grand and Central, later the location of young start-up Dewey Griffin, who we profiled earlier. The ad emphasized the rather quaint distinction between Job-Rated Trucks and Passenger Cars. Notice the 4-digit phone number, probably put through by a switchboard operator like Lily Tomlin.
1950
Sound Pontiac was a stalwart dealership in the downtown core. My friend at the Whatcom Museum Photo Archive has some incredible black and white shots of this lot circa 1946. Some day, some way, I will get them up on CC.
1950
Great ad for the short-lived automaker Kaiser-Frazer. Love their boast of being “America’s Most Copied Car.” Too bad it didn’t work out for them.
1950
And finally, for sheer weirdness, I’m including an ad from Hillyard Motors, a used-car dealership right on the edge of Old Town in Bellingham. I can’t help thinking the guy looks a little bit like a young Alfred Hitchcock.
1961 Tempest station wagon for $645! Where is my way-back machine?
I was surprised to learn from Ate Up With Motor’s history of the rope drive Tempest that the driveshaft came in several different lengths and diameters, depending on which engine and transmission a given car had. As Aaron points out, it can’t have been good for survival rates.
Some of those ads are from the time when if you wanted to call a Bellingham dealer long distance, you’d have to have an operator place the call. Some of them are from when Bellingham was in area code 206 (all of western Washington at the time). The area code split that put Bellingham in area code 360 would come later.
I miss those big old phone books, and the ability to just look up a phone number.
That ’62 Ford wagon at Diehl would have had a 352 not 325 V8, my ’63 had that same torquey but slow revving iron lump.
Regarding Diehl Ford, if they are still in business then they could be the oldest active dealership west of the Mississippi. But I remember Hughson Ford in San Francisco advertising as the first Ford dealership, and that appears to be true. Back in 1903 Henry Ford signed a deal with Mr. Hughson. Hard to believe the first dealership wasn’t in Michigan but it just shows that Henry 1 had big plans.
Does Whatcom County still have all the major brands? My county in California is about the same population and we have no Kia/Hyundai, Mazda, or Volvo, BMW, Mercedes. No Tesla service center either. We have two Ford stores and two Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram (one of which also sells VW) but only one GM dealership, one Nissan, one Toyota, one Honda, one Subaru. I suspect that any one of these dealerships takes up as much space as all the domestics occupied in the 1950’s. We also had all the Japanese power sports brands plus Ducati, KTM and Moto Guzzi … now, nothing. I guess people are willing to drive to buy vehicles and even get them serviced.
The Ford dealership is still there but the Diehl family sold it a few years ago.
Man some of those wagons were value priced!
The 59 for $195…… wonder if they’d take 150 cash 🙂
In 1969 the Federal Minimum wage was $1.30/hour. You’d have to work 150 hours to buy this for $195.
Many states today have a $15 minimum wage. 150 hours gets you $2250. I don’t think you’ll find a used car on a Ford lot today for $2250.
Hah! Love those 3-digit phone numbers!
I notice a Toll-Free County Number on Bellingham Pacer-Volare. That was a brief ’70s gimmick, soon replaced by 1-800. Before the semi-local toll-free, there were some four digit Enterprise numbers, also valid only in a metro area or a few counties.
These ads bring back a lot of memories. When I was a little kid in the 1970s, I split my time between living with my parents and my grandmother. One of those little things I enjoyed doing at Grandmom’s place was opening the Yellow Pages to the car dealership section and coloring all the cars (mom and dad wouldn’t let me do that at home… I guess they preferred pristine Yellow Pages). It was a great day when the new Yellow Pages would arrive because I’d get brand new stuff to color – and illustrations of new models too!
Looking at these ads decades later, I find the most interesting aspects to be the little bit of customization that some businesses would give. Like the bear drawing in the second ad, or the floating heads in the first and last ads that have since gone completely out of fashion.
Thanks for posting these.
I was hoping that there would be one for the Toyota dealership at its first location on Girard st, though that would have been before those phone books were published. I worked at that location in the 80’s when it was an independent auto repair and tire store. One time the owner was cleaning out the attic and I was able to take home a couple of 1-page product spec sheets for Land Cruisers including one for the Pickup version, something I was completely unaware of them making let alone importing them to the US. Of course that was short lived as the chicken tax put an end to imported pickups at least for a while.
Unfortunately the “A Frame of Values” is no longer there, 112 Samish way is now the combination gas station and McDonald’s.
Hey Dude
Thanks for letting me down easy regarding the “A Frame of Values.” I’ve probably driven right by there 100 times and not even noticed it was gone. Driving Samish Way is so different now I don’t feel like I’m in Bellingham!
Regarding the Girard Street dealership, was it at the intersection with Broadway where Fountain Rentals is now?
Thanks for checking in!
Automatic telephone switching was very common by the early 1900s except for the smallest of towns and rural systems.
When I was in Seattle recently, my brother took me to the Communications Museum, which is a former telephone switching facility. and has lots of working switches from various vintages. The technology was very leading edge; the internet of its time.
Well into the late 1960’s in rural areas of the U.S.A. one could still only dial the last four digits and be connected .
I’m trying to figure out how they squeezed 10 passengers into those old Ford wagons ~ they were big yes, but not that big .
I very much miss the big yellow pages, I still have a land line but Ma Bell has so much static on it’s it’s near useless .
-Nate
The “10 Passenger” Ford wagons were the ones with the dual facing rear seats, that you could in theory put 4 people in, as long as they were very small.
I grew up one county down-Skagit County (in Burlington). I remember a lot of Diehl Ford license plate frames running around Burlington and Mt. Vernon back in the day (apparently, they didn’t want to deal with Gearhart Ford in Mt. Vernon or Vern Sims Ford Ranch in Sedro Woolley…).
My dad went through a Volkswagen phase in the mid-1970’s. I tried to talk him into going up to Rothausen in Bellingham (so that I could put nose prints on the Porsche 911s), but he never did. He ended up buying a 1974 VW Dasher wagon and, as the family got bigger, a 1977 VW Bus from McDowell Volkswagen on Memorial Highway outside of Mt. Vernon. I always liked the occasional trip to Bellingham and taking the Samish Way exit, just to get a glimpse of Porsche’s (mid-to-late 1970’s) finest.
Hinton Chevrolet in Lynden is still going strong. Sadly, Hinton Oldsmobile in Mt. Vernon is long gone (along with the Oldsmobile nameplate). it is now the Skagit County outpost of Harbor Freight Tools. Where once were Cutlasses, Delta 88’s, and the occasional 442 now reside cheap hydraulic jacks and 15 different flavors of retrofit lawn mower engines…. just isn’t the same.
At least Blade Chevrolet in Mt. Vernon is still going strong-I think they have been around since the invention of the wheel. I remember when their new “modern ” dealership building opened….it turns 50 this year.
Thank you for posting some good memories for this (almost) 60-year-old kid!
Hey Dave
Back in the early ’90s I bought a stripper 1982 Ford F-100 from a guy in Conway. Nice shape, low miles. It was originally from Vern Sims Ford Ranch in Woolley. One of my favorite vehicles ever. Did a road trip on the “One” from Santa Barbara to Astoria, with a lot of shifting on the hairpin turns…
Also, I was trying to remember if Blade Chevrolet had a wrecking yard? Or one next to it? I had an old VW Rabbit that ended up there after “a long strange trip” (that I will try to write up one of these days).
Thanks for checking in!
It was Ferrill’s Auto Wrecking next door to Blade Chevrolet. I’d usually go there if I couldn’t find anything at Larry’s Auto Wrecking. A few of my high school buddies had cars that ended up at Ferrils after various misadventures.
Sadly, Vern Sims Ford Ranch is no more. The dealership closed down years ago and the buildings were torn down a couple of years ago. My across-the-street neighbor in Burlington was a salesman at Vern Sims in the 1970’s
I live in Tacoma now, I do head up north on occasion, though.
Having been mostly working on Auto Row in Bellingham since ’99, this is interesting stuff. Much appreciated post. I also lived in Skagit for awhile and am familiar with several places there. I used to buy records at that Antique Mall when I was into vinyl. Currently working at Roger Jobs for nearly 10 years, I have also worked at (in chronological order) Blade Chevrolet, Hinton Olds Cadillac GMC, Diehl Ford (now Bellingham Ford), and Dewey Griffin. Also a couple of autobody shops and Gundie’s auto wrecking. I raided Larry’s and Farrell’s wrecking yards several times for my projects back then.
Keep up the good posts, Dead Swede. This area is part of my history, too.