These car dealers were at the center of a modern age of commercial spectacle. They entered their cars in races. But they also sponsored frequent car shows with increasingly grandiose displays and luxurious settings. Auto shows became modern festivals of timely glamor and the sublimity of progress, often set, like the traditional festival, at special times and places. Car shows were very different from the everyday commercialism of the dealer showroom; they were even called the “social event of the season,” though their object was primarily to sell cars. Promoted by leading dealers and local officials from 1907, the shows became sites of boosterism and even cross-city competition. Rival dealers tried to outdo each other with decorations. One show was bedecked with expensive colored Chinese lanterns, and even enormous vases and ornamental plants, further adding to the aura and allure. The history of human mobility has long been dominated by men: horses, wagons, trains and ships. And so was it in 1900, as many saw the car as a modern horse (complete with horsepower). But this was also the age when women were beginning to break from Victorian and traditional constraints and conventions. Holter describes women running dealerships, but also women extending traditional female social and community service with their involvement in pressure groups for car safety and better roads. In the pioneering days of the automobile, women also entered endurance races, and a few tinkered with customizing cars. More conventionally, in a growing consumer culture where women were becoming the primary shoppers for many new products, women’s “interests” in comfort and convenience began to be considered in car design. Especially designed for women were electric cars, noted for their ease of startup — without the front crank of early internal combustion vehicles, which was replaced in 1913 by the electric starter. Holter takes seriously the personal element in explaining all this. Complementing these themes are a series of biographical sketches of major players in this story. The long-forgotten first car dealer, William K. Cowan, like many others, was a Midwestern migrant to Los Angeles, starting life in the jewelry business before entering the car trade through operating the Rambler Bicycle Shop in the 1890s before its eponymous manufacturer switched to making cars. From these seemingly accidental beginnings, he promoted the industry with races and diversification in trucks. Ralph Hamlin — whose early skills led him to build, repair, and race, in succession, bicycles, motorcycles and cars — secured a Franklin dealership. Angelenos will recognize the frequent references to the addresses and sites of Cowan’s shop and those of many other entrepreneurs whose stories are told here. Many early dealers were closely associated with the emerging movie business (like Don Lee), or quickly entered or became connected with other avant-garde businesses: service stations (Earle Anthony), radio and TV (again Lee and Anthony, as well as Paul G. Hoffman) and even cartoons (Winslow Felix). Selling cars was about turning a profit, but it was also about being part of an ongoing enthusiasm for modernity in all its forms. Dealers not only arguably introduced Americans to the vehicle of modern life but were also often in the vanguard of a fast‑paced and rapidly changing world of media and consumer culture. In his afterword, Holter notes that Los Angeles has become “synonymous with gridlock, freeways, smog, high insurance rates and permit parking, and yet the bond between people and their cars remained as unbreakable as it ever has been” — with the county counting 6,386,830 cars in 2021. For better or worse, the car culture that these early-20thcentury dealers promoted remains securely in place 100 years later. A Gary Cross is the author of “Machines of Youth: America’s Car Obsession” (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and emeritus professor of history at Penn State University. CNCDA members can pick up a copy of “Driving Force” at our Sacramento office. Or “Driving Force” can be purchased at drivingforceautomobiles.com. 26 California New Car Dealer Quarterly
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