just as car engines now have plastic engine covers.
Defining a Muscle Car Dealership
The dealerships I’ve included in this book specialized in excitement. I’ve considered any business that spent money to plunge into the risky wild waters of performance, which means I traveled farther afield with some lesser brands. The famous well-known dealers are in here, but I also included relatively obscure dealers.
Jim Wangers was an ad man at McManus, which handled marketing for the Pontiac Motor Division. Jim’s dedication to Pontiac image building during the peak of 1960s Pontiac Performance continued during the aftermath of Pontiac at car shows and in books and magazines. He created the ultimate version of a muscle car dealership when he leveraged factory support to transform Royal Pontiac in Royal Oak, Michigan, into a complete performance dealership. This makes him the ultimate person to consult when defining what “makes” a muscle car dealership.
Jim defines a muscle car dealer as only a dealership that aggressively marketed, stocked, tuned, and raced muscle cars; had a deep inventory of speed parts; and had fanatics in the sales department and mechanics that could supertune. The dealership existed solely to offer performance.
If we strictly adhere to Jim’s definition of a muscle car dealership, only a few true muscle car dealers existed during the 1960s. If we open up the floodgates the other way, it could be argued that every dealer probably sold at least a few muscle cars. We can’t count every dealership that ever sold a muscle car, and if we restrict the field to just the highest peak dealers, we miss out on some pretty cool dealerships.
Racing Sponsorship Dealerships
Few people in the 1960s could travel to the legendary dealerships to buy a muscle machine. Most muscle car hunters were restricted to local dealers. Those in the market for a muscle car looked for a place that hosted the local car club or a performance clinic. Seeing a dealership’s name on a sponsored drag car at the weekend races was a potent hint that suggested this place would speak the lingo and have the goods.
Jim Wangers believes that a dealership that puts its name on the side of a race car is not automatically a performance dealership. He said, “So they have a racing car? Big deal. It’s an empty gesture! Most of those places were full of hopeless clowns!
“You walk into one of these dealerships with their race car sitting in the showroom, but no one there knows a 4-speed from a hole in the ground!” he continued. “Their inventory is a joke! Nothing but loaded-down, option-heavy slugs with 323 open rear ends!”
Jim concedes that many “sponsorship dealers” may have had someone sympathetic to performance on staff, but he insists that the dealership itself was rarely capable of capitalizing on the exposure racing provided. Other major players from back in the day agree with Jim.
Hayden Proffitt drove race cars for all the major manufacturers during the 1960s, and he stated to me flatly that he usually had nothing to do with the dealerships that sponsored him. He said, “They never gave me a penny. The dealers who sponsored a car were just a front for the factory.”
Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen went further in racing than many others partly because he was a highly successful promoter as well as a good driver. Tom told me that he had extremely minimal involvement with any of the dealerships that put their names on his cars. When I asked him about some of his sponsors, he admitted, “I don’t remember having much to do with them. It’s kind of hazy.”
Often a driver approached a dealer for a few bucks to sponsor a car and that was as far as the dealership ever went. However, the dealerships soon noted the influx of sales when a car with its name on it won at the strip, and they quickly educated themselves about this new market.
Engine-Swapping Dealerships
Cars driven on the street were more important than the cars a dealership sponsored on the racetrack. That dealer’s drag racers may get buyers in the dealership door, but a new muscle car absolutely had to put a buyer’s friends, brothers-in-law, or neighbor down the street into the weeds.
Whenever legendary muscle car dealerships are listed, Ford and Chrysler fans become slightly disappointed by the massive number of GM dealers that appear. This occurs because more GM cars were sold in the 1960s, meaning that more GM dealerships existed as a starting point. Also, GM vehicles needed engine swappers more than Ford and Chrysler dealers, which is a compliment to the Blue Oval and Mopar camps.
The avalanche of engine swappers in the GM dealerships evolved due to GM’s corporate insistence on a 400-ci engine limit for GM intermediate and pony car muscle machines during the 1960s. General Motors held its cubic inches back because it was hovering at 60-percent market share and feared antitrust action. The automaker did whatever it could to mollify government hostility toward the corporation. Luckily, full-size GM cars and Corvettes were immune to these limits. Those monster engines were available as crated motors for transplantation or through wily use of the Central Office Production Order (COPO) system.
Anyone could buy a 428 Shelby out of many Ford dealers. At the end of the 1960s, any regular Ford dealer could order a Mustang stuffed with a factory 428 Cobra Jet (CJ). When the Mustang CJ hit the strips, it was hailed as the fastest passenger sedan of 1968½. The CJ was a bone-stock factory machine. Suddenly, years of Ford Total Performance on the racetrack was translated to the showroom floor.
Affordable Daily Driver Muscle Car
Even a basic prepackaged factory muscle car with a bare-bones order sheet stretched most budgets to the limit. The masses with limited cash revered the muscle car dealers that gained their reputations by catering to the “small guys.”
White Bear Dodge became the world’s largest Dodge dealer by adhering to a slim profit margin made possible through volume turnover of a massive inventory. A budget muscle driver could get a 383 Dodge Challenger 4-speed with marginal cash outlay. White Bear Dodge had hordes of buyers in brand-new muscle on a used-car budget due to owner Jerry Perkl’s perspective of “Let’s make deals. Let’s sell these cars!”
The mega motor dealer swappers put some fabulously crazy machines on the roads, but they were rare. Mr. Norm’s Grand Spaulding and Tasca Ford dumped an insane amount of heavy iron into the streets using the volume approach. Bob Yeakel did everything big. Bob’s “More is better” approach funneled a lot of hot Plymouths into the world.
The Parts Palaces
The typical muscle car fan was making payments on a bare-bones muscle car and had to tweak it gradually over time in small steps. The average owner suffering stoplight whippings in a stock 396 325-hp Chevelle SS or Mustang GT390 improved the car in tiny increments.
Racing is hard on drivelines, and parts departments often picked up a lot of money stocking replacement heads and pistons. Missed shifts bent valves. Over-revving toasted transmissions and clutches. Oversize maximum-traction aftermarket tires frequently broke rear ends. So, the muscle car specialists raked in “hidden” revenue via the speed parts department.
Many muscle car dealerships from the era did very strong business selling short-blocks, cranks, heads, cams, pistons, and so on. Some muscle car buyers were seriously involved in major teardowns, yanking out stock engines and building serious engines. If a 383 blew up, the owner might decide to build a 440 instead of spending nearly as much on that shot 383.
Reynolds Buick established the first Hooker Header distributorship when Gary Hooker began selling his aftermarket headers through the parts department. Hot Rod magazine listed the part numbers that were available at Reynolds to hop up Buicks.
Berger Chevrolet featured its parts guru, Jim Luikens, in print ads promoting its high-performance inventory. Mr. Norm’s took out full-page ads listing go-fast parts in car magazines. Both places sold