History What were the original kustom owners like? Anyone know?

who was the owner of the 58 and the 57 ?

 

I think you have that mixed up? Cadillac dealers would not sell to blacks, so they started hiring white men to buy the cars for them. LINCOLN found out about this and issued a memo telling their dealers to sell to anyone with the money to buy.
You guys seriously never heard of dealers who would not sell to minorities?? A LOT of dealers still wouldn't do it in the 1960s and 1970s! I assume they believed their white customers would shop elsewhere if they dropped by the showroom and saw anyone of color shopping there.
The man I was talking about in Chattanooga had to save up the full asking price in cash to get anyone to talk to him and they still treated him like crap, and that was just for him to buy a 10-year-old Pontiac that was on their trade-in lot. There are tons of stories like that.
I would imagine it was much worse in the late 1940s-early 1950s when everyone wanted to buy a new car and there were not enough to go around? Plenty of car dealers and salesmen are d!cks and surely they were more so when it was a seller's market!

 

Bob Tormey owned a full kustom Merc in the early 60's when I knew him. Great guy, had a show quality T bucket out on tour those same years. He and his wife taught high school up in Yakima Washington for many years, I was a student then. Anyway full on cool artist type bohemian style couple. Dug the full kustoms for sure.

 

Suggest you get a copy of My Years With General Motors and see for yourself.

 

I will take your word for it because my memory lies to me all the time. I do know Cadillac dealers refused to sell directly to black buyers prior to that, though. And I KNOW there was plenty of racism among individual dealers and salesmen and I just wondered if that would extend to Latino guys in SoCal in the early 1950s, hence the affinity for customizing used, lower-end cars. But I have never seen it mentioned by anyone of that era so it is pure conjecture on my part.
I think Jesse Lopez or Frank Livingston would have at least mentioned it if that were a factor.

 

The story as told by Alfred Sloan the head of GM, was that they had a meeting of Cadillac management to discuss what could be done about falling sales. This was in the early 30s at the depth of the depression. They seriously considered shutting down the Cadillac division entirely.

One man had a suggestion to increase sales. He was in charge of the service departments of all Cadillac dealers and part of his job was to visit the dealerships and inspect the service departments to see that they had the latest tools and equipment, advertising posters displayed, that the shop was clean and well organized etc.

He noticed that there were black customers visiting the service department and they weren't all chauffeurs. But you never saw a black customer in the showroom.

Discreet inquiries revealed that Cadillac dealers, along with other luxury car dealers, would not sell to a black customer because it lowered the tone of the place and was bad for the image. A black customer could buy a Ford or Chevrolet but not a Cadillac or Packard. They had to get a white friend to buy a car for them, but after that they were welcome in the service department.

His suggestion was that they sell to black customers and since no other luxury car maker was doing this, they would have this segment of the market all to themselves.

One of the executives protested that this would ruin the company and was sure to result in them all being fired.

Sloan replied that whatever happened, his company would always have a place for an executive who could come up with new ideas, while they could do without the guy who could only come up with objections.

The idea was implemented and Cadillac became the most popular luxury car with black customers. From then on most successful black people in show business, sports and elsewhere bought Cadillacs over other makes.

 

There was another thing that occurred to me on the subject of class distinctions. The richer, better educated young men were more likely to buy sports cars. I mean the college man whose parents bought him a car when he graduated high school. These were the guys who bought MGs and Austin Healeys. I'm sure not many college students could afford fancy cars but if they did, it was most likely a sports car or maybe a new American convertible.

There were exceptions like Bob Hirohata. I understand his family was well off which was why he could afford to commission the Hirohata Merc from the Barris shop. By the time he was done buying the car and paying for the work done it cost more than a Cadillac.