longest-running Jeep dealership in the world

Corwin’s is the longest-running Jeep dealership in the world

February 19, 2007
By PAUL GIANNAMORE, Business editor
The Herald-Star - Steubenville, Ohio
http://www.hsconnect.com/business/ar...rticleID=11004

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HICKORY, Pa. — In February 1942, automobile production in the United
States ceased as the car factories geared up for the war effort. New
car sales were banned after April 1942 until the end of World War II.

Among the products being produced in American auto factories was a
little four-wheel-drive military vehicle that became an American icon.
First by little Bantam Car Co., then by Ford and finally by Willys,
the Jeep rolled off the assembly lines and headed to the battlefield.

When the war ended in 1945, the American public was hungry for new
cars, and the returning GIs were fond of their Jeeps, the lifesaving,
tough little mechanical soldier that fought the Germans and the
Japanese side by side with their human counterparts.

And in Hickory, Pa., Chester Corwin began his automobile dealership,
becoming a Jeep dealer in 1946.

In 2007, one of his sons, Bo Corwin, is in charge of what is now the
oldest continuous Jeep dealership in the world. Corwin Chrysler-Jeep
recently was recognized with a plaque from DaimlerChrysler, which now
makes Jeeps, for its 60th year in business in 2006.

Corwin says his father and uncles always were working on automobiles.
His father had held several jobs, including owning a bar. He
eventually bought an auto repair shop on Route 50, Main Street in
Hickory in late 1944 and knew he wanted to begin selling cars when
they again became available.

The major nameplates already had dealers in the area, so he obtained a
distributorship from Willys for Jeep.

“And the rest is history, 61 years later,” Bo Corwin said. “Dad liked
to say he got his first Jeep station wagon the day I was born.”

The Jeep sold to postwar America was a far cry from the leather-lined,
climate-controlled, Hemi-engined Grand Cherokees and Commanders on the
market today. In fact, they were a far cry from their lineal
descendant, the Wrangler, which retains the look of the original
battlefield Jeep but has creature comforts galore. This year, it’s
even got an available three-piece hard top and four doors with power
windows.

But back then, the Jeep was a rugged tool.

As evidenced by a restored wartime Jeep at Corwin Chrysler-Jeep, the
original was tiny, barely able to accommodate anyone over six-feet
tall behind its big steering wheel. And they were spartan, coming with
no creature comforts, not even a heater.

“It was an agricultural vehicle,” Bo Corwin said.

Farmers found the Jeep could plow a field and go to market. Its
originator, the Bantam Car Co. was a tractor company originally.

The little Jeep had a power takeoff, allowing its motor to drive well
drills, backhoes and other tools.

Chester Corwin would plow a field for a farmer with a Jeep in the
1940s to prove the capabilities of the vehicle to make a sale.

“He knew the capabilities of the vehicle,” Corwin said.“The flathead 4
engine was very dependable by 1940s standards.

And the Corwins had an ace in the hole — the mudhole behind the
dealership.

Customers would be given a ride up the 45-degree slope behind the
dealership in a Jeep, proving its toughness and terrain-handling
ability.

“We’d just take you down back, and this was before seatbelts. Imagine
the liability from the lawyers we’d have today,” Corwin said.

The little Jeeps would pull the hill with no problem and impress the
customers.

Later, the Corwins made a 50-degree slope for showing customers how to
really use a Jeep, but it all came to an end one day.

“We finally had to stop doing it when I sold a Jeep to my lawyer,”
Corwin recalls with a laugh. “But many people got their first ride in
a Jeep and saw what a Jeep can do here.”

Jeeps didn’t change too much in those early years.

“There was not a big difference between a 1955 Jeep and a 1965,”
Corwin said.

So, his father would buy up old Jeeps, do a frame-off rebuild and sell
them again, providing customers with a “brand-new, 10-year-old Jeep.”

Once, Harmon Creek Coal bought one of these rebuilt Jeeps and found it
actually was one he had bought new from Corwin years before, sold to
another owner and bought it back again from Corwin as a used vehicle,
Corwin recalls.

He also remembers trips to Toledo, to the home of Jeep, where they
would pick up new vehicles to drive back to Hickory to sell.

“Originally, the passenger seat was an option. I remember once we had
to scour around for a passenger seat so that I could ride home.
They’ve come a long way,” he said.

Bo says he never was a good mechanic, but he grew up at the dealership
and learned, starting out by pumping gas, changing tires and oil.

The Corwin dealership stayed in its original location on Main Street
and it survived the trials and tribulations of the life of the Jeep
brand, which survives despite a succession of owners: Willys and
Kaiser, American Motors, Renault, Chrysler and now DaimlerChrysler.

The dealership sold Willys cars into the 1950s, when Kaiser ended
production and sold its cars only in South America.

Cars remained off the lot at Corwin until the 1980s, when AMC bought
Jeep. Renault bought AMC and then Chrysler bought AMC and Jeep in the
late 1980s.

The immaculate showroom and service area and lots around the
dealership are like a scene from the 1950s, with longer-lasting,
better running cars, of course. It’s a tidy, homey dealership in an
era of mega-sales warehouses, where the customer might not know the
service manager or be remembered by the salesman a week later.

Not so at Corwin.

The coffee is always on in the service department waiting area, where
Bo trades commentary about the news of the day with customers he knows
by name, and who shake his hand and tell stories about family and
friends.

It’s as homey as the corner barbershop, with a feeling of being among
friends.

“We’ve had families buy here, grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandsons
and now great grandsons, coming here for years,” Corwin said. “That’s
what makes it all worthwhile, that the customers care enough to come
back and say they feel like they’re part of the family.”

And the family stays. There are two 30-year employees, three who have
been there for more than 20 years and several between 12 and 20 years,
Corwin proudly says.

“You’re not dealing with the flavor-of-the-month club. We have a total
commitment here,” he said. “It’s like the chicken and the pig for your
breakfast. The chicken lays an egg and is involved. The pig becomes
the sausage or the bacon. The pig is committed. These people here are
committed.”

There have been only three office managers in more than 60 years at
Corwin, and there have been five employees who retired with more than
25 years.

“You’re not a customer. You are a friend. That’s our difference. How
else would a little dealership off the beaten path in little Hickory,
Pa., have survived all these years?”

“People in Hickory are so friendly. Passersby wave. It’s a nice little
town. It’s good for us. I think we’ve been good for them,” he said,
complimenting the town and noting its “great fire department does the
Apple Fest every year.”

Corwin says the work of an automobile dealer has gotten tougher even
as cars have improved.

“They’ve come a long way. When people say they don’t build ’em like
they used to, no, they don’t. They build them better.”

It’s the service after the sale that long-term car dealers will say
keep the customers coming back. Corwin knows that. Capable mechanics
make the dealership.

“And today, they’re technicians. I admire them, these kids today. They
make a good dealership. They should be put up front instead of down in
back. They do a heck of a job,” Corwin said.

Technology has improved, but complicated the modern automobile, with a
multitude of sensors and computers that have to work in harmony to
make them run.

And the customer has changed over the years, too, Corwin said, with
the demands for work to be done quicker in a more fast-paced world.

“The world spins faster and faster and it’s is not a matter of
patience,” he said. “And the bureaucracy of the manufacturers has
increased. We have to prove to them that the problem is real in order
to have them replace a part. And then it can take two or three days
for them to answer. The technicians are on the front lines, doing the
work every day, but the bean counters say, ‘Prove it to me.’”

In former days, the dealer could assess a problem and care for the
customer as the dealer felt it should be handled. Nowadays, he said,
it’s the accountants vs. the dealer in a battle of policy over common
sense.

“We little dealers want you to be happy and to be treated like a
family,” he said. “Sometimes, our hands are totally tied.”

Auto companies set rigid policies to avoid litigation and that makes
life difficult when the dealer is haggling with the factory over the
need to replace a part under warranty and the customer wants the
vehicle back on the road as soon as possible.

Still, he said, dealerships represent a career choice with
possibilities for young people.

“It is a little world, but you have to have the desire,” he
said.”There are opportunities in parts and service and accounting and
finance or the body shop or for salespeople. There are all kinds of
opportunities for kids, all kinds of things to use their abilities.”

Though the family atmosphere seems to come easily at Corwin, with its
roots in the Corwin family through the generations, Bo says everyone
at the dealership is key. Salespeople are on the front line and give
the store its personality.

“And if they don’t sell you, you never get to meet my great service
department,” he said, but he knows sales is a tough game. “And the
sales people meet disappointment 70 percent of the time.”

Bo and his younger brother, Jim, have been with the dealership over
the years. His brother came out of college in 1971 and into the
dealership. But Bo says the world is a different place as the next
generation prepares to take the reins.

Jim ran the dealership from 1991 until last year, when Bo returned.
Jim now is running a dealership for a family friend.

“I worked for five or six years before my dad paid me. Try that
today,” he said.

Still, he sees the enthusiasm for the business in Jim’s son, Brandon,
who is selling and working and learning at Corwin. He can recite
specifications and details for Jeeps from just about any model year,
an encyclopedia of Jeep facts and figures.

Brandon recites the lineup over the years, from the Brooks
Stevens-designed Jeep station wagons of the 1940s through the 1960s,
the pickup trucks, the Jeepster, and eventually the boxy Cherokee of
1984 that set off the SUV craze that continues unabated through today.
He knows the inner workings of that old World War II Jeep.

“I see a lot of me in Brandon,” Bo said.


--
seek electricity

After scanning the list of "improvements", is it any wonder why old
guys like me don't care for anything newer than a 1986 CJ?

Bruce