The companion points of 1956: Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac downtown — and gone by 1963

1949 — 1956 · three small stores, three short blocks

The three houses: General Motors sold its companion makes in Mishawaka through three small downtown stores, all of them within a few blocks of Main Street, and the 1956 canvass catches all three at once — the only canvass that does. Grady Motor Co Inc, at 115 West 4th, holds Buick by 1956: F. C. Yeager president-treasurer, M. L. Yeager — the Martin L. Yeager who had managed the store in 1949 — vice-president, and M. R. Mullin secretary; a Yeager family house. Gilman & Drover Inc holds Oldsmobile at 115 East 3rd, with E. Carlton Drover risen to president by 1956 from the partnership the 1949 book names. Leiter-Hibschman Pontiac Inc, "Authorized Pontiac Dealers," stands at 301 Lincoln Way — East in its alphabetical entry, West in the classified list, the conflict printed as the book gives it — under R. E. Leiter, Roland R. Leiter in full, president, and M. L. Hibschman vice-president, telephone BLackburn 9-2441.

The disappearance: In the 1963 canvass none of the three firms appears in Mishawaka's listings. The companion-make points were a downtown form — small stores for single makes in a compact city — and between 1956 and 1963, as the two cities' market consolidated and the surviving houses moved to avenue ground, the form ends in Mishawaka: Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac buyers after 1963 were served from South Bend points, or from stores the surviving record in hand does not list. Whether each of the three houses closed, sold, or moved across the river is not documented in the sources read; the 1957–62 Polk volumes are the settling source, and the three endings are named as a gap together, because the record loses them together.

Sources:

1. Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka directories, 1949, 1956 and 1963 (read first-hand) — the Grady Motor Co Inc entries of 1949 (115 W. 4th; Martin L. Yeager, vice-president and manager) and 1956 (Buick; F. C. Yeager, president-treasurer; M. L. Yeager, vice-president; M. R. Mullin, secretary); the Gilman & Drover Inc entries of 1949 (115 E. 3rd in the classified list, 115 E. 2nd in a second listing) and 1956 (E. Carlton Drover, president); the Leiter-Hibschman Pontiac Inc entries of 1956, with the Lincoln Way East/West address conflict as printed; and the absence of all three firms from the 1963 Mishawaka listings.