Classic Chevrolet Dealerships: Selling the Bowtie

Since its founding in 1912, Chevrolet has weathered the Great Depression, two World Wars, confused markets, and fuel crises to become an American motoring icon. Chevy's success would not have been possible without the network of dealerships that sold and marketed the company's cars and trucks, first to wary customers unconvinced of the new contraptions' practicality, then to nine decades of consumers ranging from cash-strapped, to cash-flush, to confused, to increasingly fuel-conscious. This book examines that network by profiling several longstanding dealerships that have thrived and sometimes just barely survived on the frontlines of the car business. Readers will be entertained by anecdotes of early dealerships that took livestock and crops as trade-ins, coped with and thrived under Chevy's stringent Quality Dealer Program in the 1930s, weathered World War II on the income generated by service departments, and corrected backward engineering of the immediate postwar era.