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. Chevys success would not have been
possible without the network of dealerships that sold and marketed the
companys 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 Chevys 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.
