Dealer of the Day: Frank’s Garage – GMC
– Posted on August 7, 2020
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I’ll take any of those trucks over what GM is selling today.
You can tell this is a TRUCK dealership – it’s in an industrial part of town, there’s no fancy glassed-in showroom, just a sales office where business people sell business equipment to other business people.
Probably a craft brewery or artist spaces now. The building’s not old or glassy enough for loft apartments. The GMC dealer franchise moved in with Buick at their suburban lot and showroom sometime in the ’90s.
Surprisingly enough, this looks like it was a standalone GMC dealership, and Frank’s GMC still exists about a half-mile from this older location (Lyndhurst, NJ).
And this older location still looks very much the same — looks like a warehouse of some sort. Google StreetView is below — the link to the StreetView is here:
https://goo.gl/maps/RxE6KaQfKfQvFBGg8
Thanks for the info. I never knew Franks GMC had been anywhere else but its present location! The far right end of the old building is now a tire shop facing the main street.
Love these beautiful trucks!
I want to go there.
this reminds me of my local downtown GMC dealer in the 70s – no showroom, just a repair garage with trucks for sale. we used to go in the garage as kids to get a 25 cent coke from the machine (50 cents elsewhere)
Trucks are a mix of 68’s and 69’s. Typical GMC commercial dealer during the V-6 years. It was during this time that GMC light truck sales started to increase in relation to their medium and heavy commercial truck sales, brought on by increasing consumer acceptance of light truck products. For GMC, this trend really took off when the GMC light truck franchises were offered to more Pontiac/Oldsmobile/Buick dealerships in suburban areas.
A serious dealer for serious trucks,. It reminds me of the old International dealer where I grew up in White Plains NY. It was basically a large garage with an office and some parking sharing a building with the Pepperidge Farm bakery outlet store. The business was Interbrite Truck Sales 344 Central Ave White Plains NY and went out of business in 1984. Interestingly they were also a Brockway dealer and the site is now a Honda dealer.
Huh. Less than a couple miles from the site of my first ever job, yet I have no recollection of it.
There was a standalone GMC dealer until a few years ago in Copake NY. It closed when the owners bought a Chevrolet dealership.
Despite being a very small town (about 3600 people), Copake also boasts a Morgan deadership.
Bergevin’s in Keene, New Hampshire, and Chapdelaine’s in central Massachusetts were very similar to this set-up, as I recall. They sold International Harvester and GMC trucks, respectively. All business, no baloney. Oh, for those good old days! Also, seeing the wrecker brought back memories. I worked at a garage years ago that replaced an IH R-185 wrecker with a GMC 7500 with a Holmes twin-boom just like the one pictured (even to the color.) We updated it with spring-set parking brakes, but it was otherwise as built: V6, 5+2, Holmes body, etc. Great truck, but didn’t have the low end “grunt” of the big 6 engine in the IH–it would pull hard down to 400-500 ram, and anything over 2000 rpm seemed risky to its health!