The trade's institutions: the associations, and the makers' men

THE STATE AND INDEPENDENT ASSOCIATIONS · BOUNDARY-PRINTED

No dealer was ever seated here, but every dealer who sold to this ground's households worked inside institutions, and the institutions print at boundary size: the franchise trade's state body is the Automobile Dealers Association of Indiana (ADAI), whose stated purpose — in its own words across its publications — is "to maintain and enhance the franchise distribution system of motor vehicles in Indiana." Its first president was Herman R. Goodin, in whose memory the association established its Civic Service Award in 1952; Goodin died in the Second World War serving as a colonel in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps — the association's founding generation is a wartime generation, which is why this article follows row 5's. By the mid-1950s the association's weight is a matter of court record: in the Indiana Supreme Court's 1957 record in Department of Financial Institutions v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corporation, the ADAI intervened for the dealer finance system, and the evidence before the Department counted approximately 1,400 automobile dealers in Indiana, 900 of them association members. In the modern record the association endorses the trade's machinery in the dealers' name (its exclusive endorsement of an electronic registration and titling system, May 2016, speaking for "more than 360 member dealers" in its executive vice-president Marty Murphy's words) and co-hosts the Indianapolis Auto Show with the Indianapolis Auto Trade Association — the show form of row 3, at state scale. The used tier of row 8 has its own, younger body: the Indiana Independent Automobile Dealers Association (IIADA), established in 1987 as, in its own words, the only statewide association exclusively serving independent (used-vehicle) dealers — the institutional home of the Gates tier rather than the franchise tier.

The makers' men — the factory's representatives who were not dealers — print at the one strength this county's open record gives them: as a career that passed through a showroom. W. R. Hinkle, who held South Bend's Ford dealership from 1911 and built its 1922 showroom at 225 North Lafayette, had come to the trade from the sales office of the Studebaker Manufacturing Company — a maker's man first, a dealer after, then president of the Board of Works and, in 1930, mayor of South Bend; he retired from the dealership in 1938 and sold the building and the Ford point in 1940 to Romy Hammes. The Studebaker sales-office-to-dealership path is the county's documented form of the maker's-man pattern, and it is South Bend's whole beyond this paragraph. No makers' representative, zone office or factory branch is seated on Granger ground in any record reached — the negative is of a piece with this section's whole record, and prints once, here.

Sources:

1. ADAI, Showroom magazine, Nov–Dec 2015/16 — the Herman R. Goodin Civic Service Award established 1952; Goodin the association's first president, died a colonel in WWII; the ADAI purpose statement.
2. Dept. of Financial Institutions v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corp., 237 Ind. 404 (1957) — the ADAI's intervention; ~1,400 Indiana dealers, 900 members, in the Department's evidence.
3. Dealertrack / ADAI release, May 9, 2016 — the ADAI endorsement; Marty Murphy, executive vice president; "more than 360 member dealers."
4. IIADA's own record — established 1987; the independent dealers' statewide association.
5. University of Notre Dame, Building South Bend, W. R. Hinkle & Co. Building, 225 North Lafayette — Hinkle's Studebaker sales-office years, the 1911 Ford point, the 1922 showroom, the 1938 retirement and 1940 sale to Romy Hammes.