He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best...

[BobPalma]

...and all that.

I also bought this photograph at the 2013 Hoosier Auto Show Literature Swap discussed in the Studebaker topic "New" Studebaker PIX: Good Day @ Literature Swap.



This photo was taken April 29, 1962 at Indianapolis Raceway Park, likely at a USAC stock-car race on IRP's 5/8-mile oval. I plan to send the original (it's a glossy print) to my friend Dave Blanck, formerly third-generation proprietor of Blanck Chevrolet Company here in Brownsburg IN, immediately west of Indianapolis.

I never knew Blanck Chevrolet to have a wrecker during the time I've known Dave, but I know they had wreckers for many years, documented by period photographs that survived the dealership's 2009 closing. Obviously, they still had a wrecker in 1962 when this photo was taken, and had donated its use for the IRP event. (Indianapolis Raceway Park is between Indianapolis and Brownsburg on U.S.136, actually closer to Brownsburg, so the wrecker was barely three miles from "home" when the photo was taken.)

Now here's what's amusing, and part of the reason I bought the photo: Bud Gates Chevrolet was a big dealer on the west side of Indianapolis. In fact, if somebody shopped Blanck Chevrolet here in Brownsburg and decided they wanted to try for a better price in the big city [Indianapolis], they would head east from Brownsburg toward Indianapolis. The first Chevy dealer they would encounter in the big city would be Bud Gates.

So smaller Blanck Chevrolet Company in Brownsburg and bigger Bud Gates Chevrolet on the west side of Indianapolis were head-to-head competitors. The irony, of course, is the Gates-sponsored 409 Bel Air bubbletop getting hauled ignominiously back to the pits by the Blanck Chevrolet wrecker. (Unfortunately, the Bel-Air's driver, Whitey Gerken, was killed in a stock-car racing accident at Illiana Speedway up near Chicago four or five years later.)

Dave will get a big kick out of this from several angles, so I'm going to mail it to him and let him open it at his new "digs," Dugan Chevrolet Company in Danville / Avon IN, where he is a full-time combination salesman. BP

[8E45E]

You seem to find interesting old photos every year!! http://forum.studebakerdriversclub.c...light=catalina

Good work!

Craig

[BobPalma]

You seem to find interesting old photos every year!! http://forum.studebakerdriversclub.c...light=catalina

Good work! Craig

Yep, Craig, and I buy most of them from the same vendor: Ted Knorr of Speedway IN. He has thousands upon thousands of photos like these, and only charges $3 / 2 for $5 for nice, glossy prints. Fair price and a nice guy; worth spending an hour in his booth...and I usually do! (He's not the vendor from whom I bought the Official 1962 500 Program, however.) BP

[Bill Pressler]

Yep, Craig, and I buy most of them from the same vendor: Ted Knorr of Speedway IN. He has thousands upon thousands of photos like these, and only charges $3 / 2 for $5 for nice, glossy prints. Fair price and a nice guy; worth spending an hour in his booth...and I usually do! (He's not the vendor from whom I bought the Official 1962 500 Program, however.) BP

Yet another great find, Bob! It'd have been easy to overlook the "Blanck" written on the wrecker over there to the right, too--glad you caught it! I think Dave will be pleased!

I don't think there was the animosity I think there was later, between competing dealers, back then. Not that it's the same, but my Studebaker dealer friend Ed Filer was good friends with the Dart brothers, Chevrolet-Cadillac dealer whose dealership property butted up against the rear of Filer's. Filer's opened a decade before Dart's and in fact I understand Studebaker actually outsold Chevrolet in our town in 1937!

I think '62 Bel Air bubbletops, as in your photo, are interesting cars and rarely seen IMHO. I'd enjoy a bone-stock one, even if not a 409.

[BobPalma]

Yet another great find, Bob! It'd have been easy to overlook the "Blanck" written on the wrecker over there to the right, too--glad you caught it! I think Dave will be pleased!

I don't think there was the animosity I think there was later, between competing dealers, back then. Not that it's the same, but my Studebaker dealer friend Ed Filer was good friends with the Dart brothers, Chevrolet-Cadillac dealer whose dealership property butted up against the rear of Filer's. Filer's opened a decade before Dart's and in fact I understand Studebaker actually outsold Chevrolet in our town in 1937!

I think '62 Bel Air bubbletops, as in your photo, are interesting cars and rarely seen IMHO. I'd enjoy a bone-stock one, even if not a 409.

Agreed, Bill. A gentleman named "Bud" Carson owned the competing Ford dealeship here in Brownsburg for decades. Dave Blanck has described the late Mr. Carson to me as, "one of the finest men I've ever known." (I did not know Mr. Carson as he has been gone some time and the Ford dealership was sold -and then resold; it is now Bill Estes Ford- to other people at least 25 years ago, so I'll take Dave's word as to Mr. Carson's character.

Things were always different (and, if I may editorialize, usually "better") in small-town America. I never heard my Dad speak poorly of any competing dealer in Paris IL in the 1950s, but I heard many compliments. It was a different world. BP

[Bill Pressler]

Things were always different (and, if I may editorialize, usually "better") in small-town America. I never heard my Dad speak poorly of any competing dealer in Paris IL in the 1950s, but I heard many compliments. It was a different world. BP[/QUOTE]


True that, Bob. I will say that a retired fellow who had worked with my Dad at the post office, and who had had new '62 and '65 Studebakers, did tell me once that the Ford dealer was 'the best Chevy salesman in town'. He said it with a straight face so it took me a minute to 'get' him!