Meyers Motors—I remember them from Iowa City, but I’m quite sure they had moved out of this downtown location by the time we moved there in 1960. I remember going to their new place somewhere on the outskirts of town, in 1974, by which time they had wisely picked up a Toyota franchise, and were doing a decent business. But the old Studebaker signs were still up.
This downtown location—and the whole block—was torn down in the later seventies for a mall. I have some vivid memories of some good times with a brief girl friend that had an apartment on the second floor of this building, or possibly the one next door.
Several of these dealers also had a gas station out front, like the Molnar Bros garage in Clinton, CT.
Here’s Matheny & Son in Santa Ana, CA.
Lots of bros selling Studebakers back then, including Millis Bros. in Black River Falls, WI.
Dalton Motors, Mankato, MN.
This one is a palace in comparison. Roseland Motor Sales, Chicago, ILL.
I wonder if the Avanti in Dalton’s window is still in Mankato. I can daydream about driving down from the Cities and buying it…
In the pre internet days it was possible to stumble on strange new items
still for sale. I am sure there were some brand new cars entombed in small
showrooms out in the hinterlands for decades.
I remember visiting my mothers hometown, Whitesburg KY in the mid nineties.
There was an old school general store there that still had brand new sixties
Motobecane mopeds for sale. The whole store was a time warp, having received
no new inventory since about 1980. As I remember asking my Grandmother
about it at the time, there was some condition in the will that required the
family to keep it open. Display cases still had new watches that were
30 years old at the time, etc etc. I have a limited edition pocket knife my
parents gave my grandfather for Christmas 1977, shortly before his death.
At the time (1994) they still had new ones for sale!
One can only imagine how much the stock brought when ebay came on the
scene.
Jon, I stumbled onto a former farm, marine, and hardware store, 15,000 square feet of stuff. The owner, recently deceased was a hoarder of truly good stuff, not a typical hoarder who collected crap. He closed the place in the late 1960s. Just turned the lights off, pulled the cords of electrical and appliances, and locked the door. I ended up with most of it, took me 5 years to clean it out. I found Motobecane mopeds as well, still in the big cardboard boxes.
Highlights include 7 Indian WW2 motorcycle engine/gearboxes in original boxes, over 50 gas and diesel powerplants, from Waukesha to Kholer, even a few Bernard diesel upright boat motors from France, sold to oyster boatmen on the Chesapeake Bay. And of course thousands of small hardware stuff & tools. The old 5 cent coke machine still had Cokes inside!
The only things I have left is a huge hoard of Evinrude outboard stuff, mostly thousands of outboard parts, manuals and lots more. Open to offers on all of it in one big sale — cheap!
Almost forgot to mention a pair of experimental WW2 air cooled Continental flat 4 diesel engines. I’m working on a CC story about them, so watch this channel!
Wow—-fascinating! I look forward to the writeup when all finished…..
Many of these are new to me, and are really cool to see. It seems like for every dealership they had that looked competitive with those of competing manufacturers, they had 2 or 3 of these little half gas station – half car dealer locations.
Many of the prewar Studebaker dealers here in Maryland seem to have been of the gas station appendage variety, like the one in Bethesda in the photo below. These sorts of dealerships (for any brand) were gone from my area by the earliest I can remember in the late ’70s. Are little gas-station new car dealerships still a thing in rural areas?
oops, photo:
Roseland is a beautiful building. Too bad the picture wasn’t in color. Is that a Checker reflected in the right window?
Great collection of images!
I felt compelled to look and see if any of these buildings are still standing. As far as I can tell, two of them are — Roseland in Chicago, and Molnar Bros in Connecticut.
I couldn’t locate the precise location of the Black Water Falls, WI dealership, though in looking around the town, I didn’t see any buildings that looked like it. It seems that the Iowa City, Santa Ana and Mankato dealerships were part of whole-block demolitions at some point, and all have been replaced by larger developments.
The Roseland Motor building is located at 11200 S. Halstead St. – the building seems to be in pretty rough shape, though it’s still around, which is more than can be said for most of these old buildings. A current StreetView image is below:
…and this is the Molnar Bros. building at 103 W. Main St. in Clinton, CT. The least architecturally alluring building here, but it’s the most likely to survive.
The building itself has been modified over the years, and is now home to a golf cart distributor:
One of the Studebaker dealers local to me was American Service Center in Arlington, VA. They started out as a gas station (American, later Amoco) with service bays, later taking on Studebaker sales (and Hotpoint appliances) and expanding the building. Like many Studebaker or Packard dealers they added Mercedes-Benz after the 1957 distribution deal, as well as later adding several other brands like Lancia and Fiat. By the time I saw the building in the 1980s they exclusively sold M-B (and proud of not selling other makes – their website URL is JustMercedes.com), and I recall being surprised at how small the “American Service Center” sign on the building was. I later saw an old photo that showed that sign originally had STUDEBAKER in large letters above the dealership’s name, and after 1966 they simply took down the Studebaker part of the sign.
I’ve learned here that Mercedes-Benz got very strict about removing any lingering references to Studebaker-Packard by 1970 or so left in M-B dealerships in signs, photos, and such, apparently not wanting to be associated with either of those failed automakers.
There’s a good shot of the early gas station/Studebaker configuration at :22 in this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=0crimFjyeC4
There was a Studebaker sign on a building in Holderness, NH near Little Squam Lake. The sign was still there until about ten years ago. It was one that stuck out 90 degrees and was still in good shape. Whether it was stolen or just finally removed, will remain a mystery.
Here’s a current photo of one that seems to be more purpose built – located on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, MN, down the street from Macalester College. It now houses a coffee place and a few other stores.
This building became “Grand Avenue Ford” subsequently, where I bought my first new car, a 1968 Mustang.
Starks Studebaker, Toronto. The site is now an office building.
For those who really want to take a dive, below is a link that gives known Studebaker dealers by city and state. Some have links to ads, some have pictures of the dealerships, some show various trinkets used by the dealer, and some have nothing but an address.
Having checked out Missouri, Oregon, and Indiana, it is packed full of information, most importantly an estimate of when established.
My hope had been to scope out some of the dealerships in Missouri and write something up but, well, I’ve had too much life going on the past six or so months.
https://www.studebaker-info.org/Dealers/alldealers.html
“My hope had been to scope out some of the dealerships in Missouri and write something up but, well, I’ve had too much life going on the past six or so months.”
Someone is doing just that. But it is for old BMC dealers. He updates it on his Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BritishMotorCare/
Interesting. I believe that the former Flying A Service dealer building still stands on the corner of Water St. and Boulder Highway in Henderson, NV. I think it’s a body shop now.
Thanks for that link. The big surprise for me was that Burien City Garage was once a Studebaker dealer, they were also an IH dealer and in fact was the one that sold my 72 Scout new and serviced it for many years. They continued on as independent repair shop after IH went away and finally closed their doors just a few years ago. There was at least one other Studebaker cars and International Trucks dealer listed in W. WA. I wonder if that being a not uncommon match up factored into IH’s decision to use Studebaker hub caps minus the “S”
Looking at some of the other locations in Western WA has some other surprises, like the one in Renton which has been a body shop since the 80’s that I’ve driven by 1000’s of times and never knew it used to be a car dealer. A number of other locations are still standing.
Another big surprise was that “The Studebaker Center” in Seattle had a separate lot a few blocks away called “Lark Town”.
Franklin-Studebaker, now a furniture store:
Can anyone tell me what the car on the left in the first photo is? I saw one just like it on the highway a couple of years ago but was unable to get further ahead than the left rear- quarter, due to traffic. I’ve always wondered since, what it was.
Alan,
The car out in front of the dealer’s showroom is a 1948 Studebaker Commander Starlite Coupe. It’s a fairly rare and desirable car, as the vast percentage [95%?] of surviving Starlite coupes are Champions. The 3 little chrome stars on the front fender vent are the easiest way to identify this as a Commander.
I’ve owned 2 1950 Champion Champion Deluxe Starlite coupes, and a very rare 1951 Commander Starlite coupe, with the new V8 engine and Borg Warner automatic.
thanks very much!
Black Tooth Brewing, 520 W. 19th Street, Cheyenne is the former Fleischli Studebaker dealership. The building was built in 1950 for that purpose. In later years it was a Lincoln/Mercury dealer, a VW dealer and a large print shop. After a long renovation, the brewery opened a few years ago. The building is perfect for an afternoon beer or three. The quality is good.
It is airy and light inside in the big bar – like a car showroom. The brewing of Black Tooth’s local product takes place out back in what was once the service department. Though Black Tooth has several brand names unfortunately there is not yet a “Studebaker Stout”, “Avanti Ale” or “President Pilsner”
Nice, please keep sharing the great pictures .
-Nate
Paul, FWIW, this is April 1959, and Meyer Motors as “former occupants”–is that the address pictured?
Yes it is. Makes sense, as I would very much have noticed them if they had still been in downtown after we arrived there in 1960.
Their new location was outside of my normal bicycling radius, so I never went into a Studebaker “showroom” as a kid.
Nice piece, thank you Paul. Another bad product of the 70’s….. the mall-ification of many downtowns to me is akin to the malaise brougham era, and I believe this is the case in Downtown Iowa City. The Beck Building/Meyers Dealer could have been a unique restoration for many types of pedestrian-friendly uses. Can’t blame the City on the retail crash, but hopefully this hulk of a building legacy can find a large scale reuse.
Wow, this article took me down the rabbit hole. My father’s uncle had Studebakers, but the only one I remember was the 1962 Lark VIII that he had at his passing. I was seven at the time, so I don’t have vivid memories of the car. Looking at the listing of the dealers got me to thinking, where did Großonkel Joe buy the Lark? In our small town in Ohio along the Pennsylvania border, there were about five dealers within a 10 mile radius. Three of these were on the Pennsylvania side of the state line, two of which were in walking distance of his house. After some Google searching, I located the addresses of the old dealers, only one of which is a dealership, now a Ford franchise. The others have either been demolished and the last one is a storage warehouse, similar to others in the comments.
I still have vague memories of combination gas/service stations/car dealers all on the same lot. Apparently in the smaller towns this was quite common, as the whole stand alone dealership idea hadn’t been refined yet. IIRC the local Nissan (Datsun) and Honda dealers in my hometown started out that way in the early 70’s.
As for Großonkel Joe’s Lark, I still have no idea where it came from. It remains a mystery.
I recall seeing a Studebaker sign on a building maybe up until 15 years ago in Colchester Connecticut. It was on the main road across from where there’s now a McDonald.
Thanks Jason for posting the Studebaker-info.org info. I found my old hometown Stude dealer in Hilo,HI. Except for the hedges it is now a dog grooming place.
From https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/usgs-st-petersburg-studebaker-building
This historic brick Studebaker Building, originally built in 1925, was chosen as the location for the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center in the late 1980’s. Many of the building’s original features are kept in tact to this day, including the Studebaker logos along the top of the building, and the Studebaker Distributor sign on the back of the building that is maintained in spirit of the building’s history.The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 5, 1985 and the St. Petersburg Register of Historic Places in 1986.