Читать книгу Lost Muscle Car Dealerships - Duncan Scott Brown - Страница 9

Late 1960s advertising proclaimed that Clippinger Chevrolet was California’s oldest Chevy dealership. The dealership was located in West Covina, California, and held honors for the most Corvettes sold by a single individual. That individual was Bob Wingate, who was lionized as the single biggest individual volume Corvette salesman in all of the United States.

Founder Isaiah Hale Clippinger was born on October 4, 1877, in Iowa and began his auto career in 1917. Hale established Clippinger Chevrolet at 7th and Central in Los Angeles in 1921. He moved the dealership from downtown Los Angeles to 137 W. San Bernardino Road in Covina in 1929.

The Clippinger neon sign still stands at the corner of Citrus in Covina. This dealership was state of the art in 1967. Now, the lot serves as temporary overflow parking for foreign dealerships.

Hale’s son Norman H. Clippinger (born January 14, 1913) became vice president of the dealership beginning in 1933. In the 1940s, Hale bought back the first car he ever sold (a 1921 Chevy) to display as an advertising gimmick and a good luck talisman. Soon, high-performance cars proved to be luckier!