The Former Car Dealerships of CV – Part 1

I get quite a few great suggestions for stories from readers. Last year Ed Fortier suggested a story on the car dealerships of the valley, and he gave me several leads. I’ll start with the dealers whose auto showrooms still exist, now housing other businesses. I’m unsure of many of the start/stop dates of these dealerships, so bear with me. If you know any details I’ve missed, shoot me an email.

To the south of Montrose is a repurposed former auto dealership building at 3450 Verdugo Road, today housing VIP Trust Deed. This building was originally a Whippet automobile dealership. The Whippet was a short-lived offshoot of the Willy’s-Overland Company. Whippets were only produced from 1926 to 1931, so we can surmise the structure was built during that period. The building is a gorgeous brick structure with high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that are arched at the top. It used to have a decorative top façade that gave the building even more height, but in the 1971 Sylmar Earthquake that topping ended up as a big pile of bricks on the front sidewalk. (That’s why you don’t run out of buildings during earthquakes.)

In a photo from the 1940s we see that the building had become a Ford dealership. There may have been other dealerships in there at other periods. The building today has been the home of VIP Trust Deed Company since 1990.

Moving north on Verdugo, we come to the Verizon store on the corner of Verdugo Boulevard and Verdugo Road, right across from the entrance to the Montrose Shopping Park. In 1936 an interesting businessman named Harry V. Slack built this building as a Plymouth-Dodge dealership. Its architecture was rather odd. The front façade was art deco, but in the center of the curved truss roof it had this tall, stepped sort of Byzantine-looking tower, doubling the height of the building, which has since been removed. On the front face of the tower, gigantic letters spelled out “Harry V. Slack,” the “V” many times larger than the rest of the letters, making it look like some kind of religious symbol. The words “Plymouth” and “Dodge” anchored both sides, and the entire thing blazed in neon glory at night! In addition to all this dynamic architecture and signage, a piano sat in the new car showroom and Mrs. Slack would tinkle the ivories to serenade browsing customers.

Besides the new car showroom, a used car lot was to one side and service bays in back. We don’t know how long Harry V. Slack operated out of this building, but we do know that at some point the Ford dealership that was in the VIP building moved to the “Slack Building” becoming Montrose Ford. This is the same dealership that later had the Ford lot where Montrose Trader Joe’s is today. Harry Slack’s building was for several decades Foothill Mattress. Lately it’s been a revolving door of other small business, the most recent Verizon Wireless.

Just around the corner at 2100 W. Verdugo Blvd. is the showroom for Choices Unlimited, a kitchen and bathroom remodeler. This distinctive glass-fronted building was once a Buick dealership. It was built in 1952 as Golden Buick, owned by Bill Golden, the youngest Buick dealer in America. This great example of the stylized architecture of the ’50s once showcased the 1952 Buick Roadmaster, powered by the 170 horsepower “Fireball 8” engine. The former Buick service shops in back are now an independent auto service business.

Across the street and down a bit at 2131 Verdugo Blvd. is the newly opened Suzy’s Furniture Gallery. Although the building looks relatively new, it’s actually over 90 years old. An old Sanborn Fire Insurance map from the early ’20s shows the building already there and denotes that it was an auto dealership, although it doesn’t say which brand. Sadly, I don’t know either. A clear shot of the building from 1946 shows it as a furniture dealership.

I’ll continue next week with more defunct local auto dealerships and the buildings they left behind.

  mike lawler