Guest Post: Reflections on The Hamilton Legacy by Scott Davis

“How would you fellas like to sell Buicks?”, Lowell Hamilton once told me were the words that he’d never forget. It was six years ago that Lowell recounted a story to me from 65 years ago, but, with a hint of laugh in his voice, you could tell that it still excited him like it happened the day before. At that point, the Hamilton’s already had a solid twenty-year history in the car business. It was on a day in 1946 that Lowell and his father Ira were out working on a walkway in front of the small car lot located on North Broadway that a man pulled up in front of them driving a shiny new Buick. He asked Lowell if he knew where to find Ira Hamilton. Lowell pointed to his father who was working along side him, and then the man’s next words were those that ultimately would change the makeup of the Hamilton dealership and the Darke County vehicle market for the next fifty-six years.

Lowell’s father Ira had founded the business originally as a filling station in 1926. Located at the setting of a former blacksmith shop on North Broadway where the Maid Rite parking lot currently sits, Ira soon began to buy old Model T Ford’s. These vehicles were in need of repair and Ira would fix them up for resale. Being that, at the most, the Hamilton’s would have two or three old Model T’s available, the vehicles would sit in the alley behind the filling station known as Whallon Street.

The car business did not come at the steep entry price as it does now; Lowell recounted that usually $200-300 could buy your way into the automobile business in the 1940s. Because of this, there were nearly eleven new car dealers in Greenville in the decade, and dealers were present in Bradford, Union City, Versailles, and a Ford dealership was even present in Arcanum. He stated the major difference between the dealers then and the dealers of today was that “Now there are four larger dealers, selling more cars”. Many of the car lots faded away with time, but it didn’t happen during the Depression like one may erroneously assume. Lowell was only twelve when the stock market crashed, and although he recalled the madness on Wall Street that ensued, he says that dealers locally just rode out the tough times and casually dissipated.



Lowell joined his father in the family business in 1936, and shortly thereafter, joined the United States military and served in World War II. When he returned, he was greeted with a brand new car lot located on North Broadway that was selling Nash’s and Packard’s. Then, fate stopped at the lot in the form of the man driving the shiny new Buick. At that time, Lowell was very excited to take on the Buick franchise. After learning that the local Buick dealer Cleo Baker had died while he was off fighting the war, he had wrote his father and told him that he should write Buick and request the franchise. It was great timing for the Hamilton’s. The automobile manufacturer’s era was just beginning and during the years of 1946 until 1949, the demand was outrunning supply. The Korean War did not detour the car business like one might think it would; rather, because people did not want to wait out another depression with their old car, sales skyrocketed.

As the business transitioned in the 1950s and 1960s and the cars morphed to various shapes and styles, Lowell fondly remembered the days as good years. In 1958, the dealership was offered a new car franchise from the American Motors Corporation. He considered that era as a time “When the new car announcement was something to look forward to.” He said that they would keep new vehicles covered and hidden until the new car announcement day came, and then the showrooms would fill with people ready to catch a glimpse of the new models and vehicle styling. Now, a model or year change is just a simple transition; as soon as they come in, they get sold right away.

By 1972 when Lowell’s son Monty joined him in the business, the era was quickly dominated by the presence of the United States energy crisis, poor vehicle quality, and recession in the late 1970s. Lowell and Monty recollected that before GM started using galvanized steel in the early 1980s, vehicles were very rust prone. That was not the only problem vehicles had; “Tires as well have come a long way with radial tires…. no longer did people have to replace tires every 18-20,000 miles. With proper tire care, tires last up to 60,000 miles.” In addition, spark plugs needed replaced every 20,000 miles. Another prevalent theme of vehicles in the 70s was that fuel economy was not taken seriously. The most fuel-efficient vehicles were only getting 18 miles to the gallon, which caused inventory backlog for the larger gas-hog vehicles during President Carter’s administration. Backlogging inventory became a common theme; the same happened to the more expensive vehicles in the early eighties when interest rates hit nearly 20%. Although foreign competitors such as Honda and Toyota became major threats to domestic sales in the 1980s, Monty believed this to be a good change for the car business because it forced improved quality of manufacturing for GM’s, Ford’s, and Chrysler’s.

You could not tell Lowell “They don’t make them like they used to.” When that question was posed to him, he replied “You can’t say that anymore…. vehicles are built better to last longer”. Just as durability and quality is a key selling point for vehicles, it would have seemed that the same was true for dealerships.

The Hamilton dealership closed its doors in February of 2008 after 82 years of serving the rural Dayton market in a time when dealers were forced to sink or swim in economic uncertainty. I worked for the Hamilton family until the doors closed and as far as I’m concerned to this day, if longevity were the only measure of one’s legacy in their business field, the Hamilton’s were at the head of the class, continuously trying to build from their simple beginnings in 1926.

-Scott Davis