Old Car Dealers in the Detroit Area

[reddog289]

If I were older then 2 back in 71 maybe I would be of more help. There are dealerships I remember in Plymouth, Yet the ones back in the 50's,60's and 70's escape me cause of my age.
I used to make deliveries for the dry cleaner I worked for back in 86/87. AnnArbor Rd and Plymouth for that matter is different as night and day for the most part.
Crossing I-275 you had Don Massey Cadillac,Hines Park L-M,. At Mill St /Lilley Rd . There was Colony C-P and across the street Dick Scott Buick. When you hit MainSt you have Dick Scott Dodge. And last up by Sheldon Rd there was Sunshine Honda.
But in 20 some years things have changed.A new Saturn dealer and a new location for the Honda dealer,DickScott Dodge got a new showroom, While his Buick dealer moved in with Bob Jeanotte,and that building became a Jaguar dealer,a Mitsubishi dealer to ? as to what it is today. And Colony got the Jeep and got rid of Plymouth as It became Fox Hills, and is gonna be a memory like Allison/Edelbrock Chevy. Whew that was a scan of my brain.
On Friday it seemed I drove everywhere and to tell you this was after work I was still thinking of the old dealers that once lined the streets I drove.

[shovelhead]

At least in'64, Don Massey was Beglinger[[?)-Massey Olds-Cadillac, on the corner of Main and Ann Arbor Road. Jack Selle Buick was east of there on A2 Road, and Berry Pontiac was on the west side of the intersection, second building as the first corner lot was the Daly's Drive In.

The Laird's Glass building on Main was a dealership also. Before they owned it though. I was told, can't remember what car.

Back to the Edelbrock question, I remember my uncle bought a '67 Impala coupe that year, it had a Ernest J. Allision license plate frame on it. At least until '72 the frame was on it, that stuck in my memory as I was working at another Chevy dealer at the time.

About Novi's car dealer history, in the late 60's, on Old Novi Road was a Chrysler Plymouth dealer, Wheaton's if I remember correctly. It caught fire, sometime in late '68 or early '69. Novi lost a police car in it. Today the concrete slab is still there, about half way between South Lake Drive and the "new" Novi Road, on the west side.

[econ expat]

Novi was going to be the 'New Frontier' for alot of NW Detroit dealers.

Mulligan, Redford Chrysler, ?? Dodge[[before Luv/Kelel),?? AMC, Dean Sellers and Rosedale Olds all were planning to move.
Ford even built a new L-M Dealership across from 12 Oaks for Mulligan. When Mulligan's business deal in Detroit went bad, Ford tried to unload the Novi place on every other dealer around. Shuman's elected to stay put and sell Chryslers, Mach was forced out, sold to McDonald, Sellers opted to stay put vs. pay the high rent, OGreen also sold out, etc. Noone wanted that place in Novi - it was impressive, though. The Car Dealership that never opened...Part of it was eventually converted into a restaurant, part of it sold to the adjacent hotel.

Dealership buildings used to be a little more unique, but it's still easy to tell if a building housed a dealership, not many businesses had a large garage area behind a showroom front.

Alas, I have no info about Allison/ Jim Edelbrock in Plymouth either.I can usually spot a former dealership bldg, but most of the buildigs in Downtown Plymouth have looked like retail store fronts for a long time.

[jackie5275]

I remember Zubor Buick being in Lincoln Park at Dix & Southfield. Now it's a Kroger. Does anyone remember the used car dealer Don Foss? "Your job is your credit". He seemed to be white hot for about an 18 month period, did alot of expansion, then seemed to vanish.

[catch22]

I remember Zubor Buick being in Lincoln Park at Dix & Southfield. Now it's a Kroger. Does anyone remember the used car dealer Don Foss? "Your job is your credit". He seemed to be white hot for about an 18 month period, did alot of expansion, then seemed to vanish.

Yeah, they seemed to be all over for a while. Don't know what happened to them. There was a Foss store in Redford on the north side of Grand River a couple blocks west of the old Redford Hospital. Google street view shows that it's still a used car dealer of some kind.