Bob Thomas Ford: the second Ford name on Coliseum

1980s — present

What the record supports: Fort Wayne's Ford trade began with the Brosius brothers' hole in the wall in 1910; its modern house is Bob Thomas Ford. The group's own public account brackets the founding rather than dating it — "Serving Fort Wayne For Over 40 Years," the house said in 2025, and "part of Indiana for almost 40 years" — which places the Thomas start in Fort Wayne in the first half of the 1980s. The exact year is not in the house's published history, and the record prints the bracket instead of a guess, the same discipline it applies everywhere else.

The shape of the group: The Bob Thomas Automotive Group runs two Fort Wayne stores — Bob Thomas Ford Lincoln North at 310 W. Coliseum Blvd., three hundred yards of boulevard from Glenbrook's flagpole, and Bob Thomas Ford West at 5321 Illinois Road — and two more in Indianapolis. The West store describes the concern as a second-generation, family-owned and operated dealership, and the owner, Bob Thomas, stands on the public record in his own name: in 2025 he was quoted in the Fort Wayne press as the dealership's owner, discussing the city's Pufferbelly Trail bridge, for which the city needs property from businesses along Coliseum Boulevard, his among them. A dealership old enough to have its land wanted for a trail bridge over the boulevard it grew up on — a boulevard the city counts at over 37,000 cars a day — has, by that measure alone, been on the corridor a long time.

Sources:

1. The houses' own published pages (Bob Thomas Ford West, "second-generation, family-owned"; the Coliseum and Illinois Road addresses; the group's two-and-two store count).
2. WFFT reporting via Muck Rack, 2025 (Bob Thomas, owner, on the Pufferbelly bridge).
3. The house's anniversary framing, 2025 ("Serving Fort Wayne For Over 40 Years").