A legacy of automobile sales and service reaches a milestone.
By Mary O’KEEFE

In 1917 Southern Californians enjoyed their third Rose Bowl and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated. In April, the United States declared war on Germany and entered WWI and Walt Disney graduated from Benton High School. In San Francisco the memory of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, just 11 years earlier on the San Andreas Fault, was still fresh in everyone’s minds. In fact, it was that earthquake that can be directly related to Crescenta Valley’s own Bob Smith Toyota.

“It was interesting. The earthquake happened a few years before and horse and carriage was the mode of transportation,” said Mike Smith, owner of Bob Smith Toyota. “My grandfather said if you want to get out of town quick you can’t do it on horse – you need a car.”

That was the apparent motivation for the beginning of a motor dealership legacy that is just as strong today as it was 100 years ago.

Bob Smith Toyota has been on Foothill Boulevard for 24 years but their dealership pedigree goes beyond a quarter of a century and the CV location.

Mike and son Pete Smith are, respectively, the third and fourth generations of the Smith family who have “motor vehicle in their blood.”

The first dealership that started in San Francisco in 1917 continued through 1934.

“In those days if you had a franchise you were allowed to set up shop anywhere in the city,” Mike said.

They had 12 little shops set up all over San Francisco. They looked like little gas stations but were outlets for car sales.

“You were basically a distributor,” Pete added.

“So you couldn’t buy a Chevrolet unless you bought it from Smith Anderson (what the dealership was called then),” Mike said.

Back then the motor vehicle was not commonplace but the Smith patriarch had a vision of not only what people wanted but what they also would want in the future.

“I am not sure where [grandfather’s] education ended but he was smart enough to think the car business had a future,” Mike said.

That is an understatement. Throughout the century, the Smith family has had dealerships that sold Volkswagen, Porsche, BMW, Fiat and Dodge Plymouth brands to name a few.

It was not all easy but hard work.

“[Grandfather] had lost everything in the Depression. He went broke,” Mike said.

Luckily he knew a man who had some money who offered to put him back into the car business. They partnered and were able to open a Dodge Plymouth dealership in Glendale on the corner of Colorado Boulevard and Central Avenue and another in Burbank.

“My dad graduated from USC in 1936 and stayed in the business,” Mike said.

In 1953, Smith bought out his partner and closed the Burbank location. Then in 1957 Mike’s father bought a location at Chevy Chase Drive and Brand Boulevard in Glendale.

Mike’s father inherited his keen business intuition from his father and realized that in the 1960s Volkswagen seemed to be a new and exciting vehicle.  By now there were four boys in the family business and he thought this would be a great way to expand, and they did – into Hollywood.

There were constant revisions of requirements from the specific dealership franchises. Where once sales and service could be separate, rules came down to keep them together, which meant finding locations large enough to encompass both.

During this time of dealership growth, the Smith family branched into leasing. Again, this was not a common practice.

“There were really two big companies in leasing… My dad had a lot of friends who would buy Dodges and would do in-house financing, so they didn’t have to pay too big a down payment. Then two or three years later they would turn in their car and get another car,” Mike said.

Through this, the leasing company, Sierra Leasing, was born. Mike’s brother Rob felt comfortable with leasing.

“What he did was magical,” Mike said.

“At one point we had 3,500 cars out on lease,” Pete said, adding they were one of the few that would lease food trucks.

The Smith family really does have automotive in their blood. The Chevrolet dealership was in business 17 years, Dodge 29 years, VW/Porsche/Audi 30 years, Toyota going strong at 24 and the BMW dealership still in Calabasas has been going strong for 44 years.

Aside from Mike’s sister who lives in northern California who has been in education most of her life, for the most part four generations of Smiths have been in the business of selling, servicing and leasing cars.

“Automotive blood has spread throughout the family pretty good,” Mike said.

It is the family foundation that has kept the Smiths successful for 100 years. This family loves what they do and they love each other.

When Pete graduated from college he went to New York and accepted a job with MetLife.

“He was successful for three years, much to my dismay,” Mike joked.

Then he called home and said he was ready to move back west. The dealership had just moved up to the Crescenta Valley area and it was not easy. Mike credits Pete’s return to the success at the Foothill location.

“His arrival was the beginning of our business taking off,” he said. “[Dad] always said you need to keep young fresh ideas in your business.”

Pete said he just came and sold cars, but what he did was join a Toyota trade group that gathered three or four times a year with dealership owners from across the country. This networking/brainstorming group discussed what they were doing right in their business as well as what wasn’t working. The give-and-take of ideas was invaluable for the business.

Mike said that he had always wanted a dealership in his community. He and Pete worked hard to reach out to the Crescenta Valley.

This community, especially the schools, knows Bob Smith Toyota for their philanthropic and generous spirit.

“We love being in the community,” Mike said adding he was happy not being on a so-called “Boulevard of Cars.”

“We have someone come in [on average] once a month and, ‘Say we didn’t know you guys were here,’” Pete said. “It blows our mind – these aren’t new people to the area.”

Bob Smith Toyota deals with many of the same issues that other businesses do, including coping with online influences, but it is the family foundation, loyalty to their customers and loyalty to their employees along with a one-on-one personal touch that they feel keep their business strong.

The company is well-known for its professional service department. Pete said they have loyal employees in service and in the sales department. That loyalty can be traced to the way employees are treated … like family.

“We have quarterly lunches for [our employees]. We don’t just stay in our offices. We are out circulating,” Mike said.

He added they want to know how things are going with their Bob Smith family, from those going through tough times to those who are celebrating their children graduating from college.

Seventeen years ago they started having a Thanksgiving dinner for their employees and their families. At the beginning about 40 people showed up; last year there were about 180. They have watched their employees’ children grow up and graduate.

The employees know how well they have it at Bob Smith as well, even if they drive in from Lancaster or La Verne.

“Recently a mechanic said [his commute] was too far and that he had got a job about 10 minutes from his home,” Pete said. “He called a month later and said he wanted to come back.”

He told Pete that he was glad he went off to another company because he learned what it meant to work at Bob Smith.

It is that kind of family feel that Mike and Pete have nurtured in their business, and it is that foundational lesson that has been passed from generation to generation that has kept the Smith family in the automotive business for 100 years.

  Mary Okeefe