a lifelong engagement with American folk and popular music, but he was also trained as a modern social historian and taught at UCLA. When, through his connection with the California New Car Dealers Association, he came upon an archive of dealers’ documents, he decided to write their history. The result is not an academic tome; it was edited for a wider audience by local architecture authority and television producer Stephen Gee, who found and arranged in the book an interesting and attractive array of local photos and car-themed cartoons and ads illustrating LA car culture during its formative years. The result is an unusual book. Most chapters reflect a dealer’s perspective — e.g., “Auto Rows and Retail Facilities,” “Selling Cars on Credit,” “Service and Repairs” and “Used Automobiles.” But Holter’s treatment of these themes goes beyond business issues to show how the first generation of car buyers were sold on automobility. Although “Driving Force” avoids the polemics of academic history, it insists that the retailer was irreplaceable. In the early years, carmakers were hardly prepared to lead the automobilization of the United States. By 1910, there had already existed nearly 500 of these enterprises, nearly half of which soon failed. Most were essentially parts assemblers with little capital or capacity for distributing and selling their products on a national scale. Instead, retailers had to supply the capital to manufacture early cars by winning customers who ordered cars to be custom-built. Neither manufacturers nor banks would provide consumer credit for purchasing such an untested product. Dealers found that they had to offer down payments and credit to consumers. Parts were unstandardized down to nuts and bolts, causing a nightmare in repair for which manufacturers provided little help. This, too, required local ingenuity. Of course, manufacturing innovations (culminating in Ford’s assembly line of 1913), created mass production and a steady flow of vehicles to dealer showrooms and lots. Still, though Ford tried for a time to directly retail the Model T, most car companies adopted a franchise system of independent dealers that offloaded a lot of risk to retailers. Central to Holter’s story is the transformation of the car from a toy of the rich to a democratic right and necessity — a shift that required more than the assembly line. The car became the central product of an American revolution in mass consumption because it became affordable to the many and because the many were won over to its necessity. Part of this was the work of retailers like those on Los Angeles’s Auto Row. Making cars affordable to the average family required consumer credit just as home ownership did. At first, dealers sold all cars on a cash basis (in part because manufacturers demanded large deposits to build cars on order). But soon, dealers offered down payments, leading, in the 1910s, to finance companies providing car loans, thus making possible middle-class car ownership. As early as 1925, 75% of brand new cars purchased in Southern California were done so on installment plans, even if they were only for a short term of two years or less. A second innovation also eased entry into car culture: the used-car trade-in. This made new cars affordable to many and the sale of those used cars accessible to still more. Dealers at first resisted opening used car divisions. Like used clothes, dealers in luxury items such as early cars thought selling them used was degrading — like high-end dress shops selling used skirts. Yet, as fewer customers were first-time buyers and more needed financial incentives to buy new, trade-ins became the norm. This was not always advantageous to dealers who, when pressed into selling new cars, had to offer unprofitable trade-ins. Still, the logic of the used-car market greatly expanded ownership. By 1923, while 3.6 million new cars were sold in the United States, there were 2.8 million trade-ins. Given the variety and different vintages of used cars, finding a “fair” price was a problem for both buyer and seller, producing the need for a reliable price guide for used cars, which was eventually provided in 1926 by Leslie “Les” Kelley, of LA’s Kelley Kar Company, in the form of his business’s inaugural Blue Book. Winning commitment to the car required more than making it affordable. Cautious customers needed assurance that the car could be fixed when it broke down, as it did far more often than today. Bad roads and driver misuse and ignorance were compounded by the lack of car manuals and standardized parts, creating demand for the hit-andmiss work of auto mechanics. Car dealers, of course, opened service departments but also pushed manufacturers to improve parts and service training. These seemingly prosaic advancements made U.S. car culture possible. Less tangible, but no less necessary, was how dealers created a mystique around the car and its possession. Though automobiles were known as practical machines of mobility, which were first sold in the often cramped and dirty settings of machine shops and livery stables, dealers soon realized that their cars could represent not simply vehicles of transport but, rather, expressions of status for an emerging middle class. Dealers learned to display and glamorize their autos, just as modern downtown department stores did their suits and gowns. Such expectations have largely disappeared from our discount shopping world. But early in the 20th century, with many of the new sites of consumption, dealers concentrated their showrooms downtown, usually near each other on a succession of auto rows (first on Main Street and then, by the 1910s, on Figueroa). Dealers in Packards, Lincolns, Stutzes and Chandlers moved to architect-built structures, often multistoried, with well-lit showrooms and upper floors for parts, used cars and repair — a surprisingly early application of the concept of “full service” at a time when most business was small and often specialized. These buildings suggested not only elegance but also efficiency — they were emblems of progress. 25 California New Car Dealer Quarterly
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