The first census: two sellers in 1921

1921 · Polk's South Bend city directory, Mishawaka classified section

The whole field: Polk's 1921 directory gives Mishawaka a classified heading for automobiles, and under it stand exactly two names. The Mishawaka Battery Service, at 702–04 South Main, telephone Mishawaka 225, kept by Florian S. Kelley and Frank O. Kelley, was an electrical house — Westinghouse batteries, starting and lighting service — that carried a car line as a sideline: the listing reads "Agents Elgin Cars," the Elgin being a Chicago-built automobile of the middle rank. The second seller was not Mishawaka's own at all: W. R. Hinkle Inc. (Mishawaka Branch), at 215–217 Lincoln Way West, telephone Mishawaka 91, the branch of South Bend's Ford distributor, whose house stands in the Ford entry below. Two sellers, neither of them a purpose-built automobile store: that is the documented size of Mishawaka's new-car trade in 1921.

The garage trade around them: Around the two sellers the same canvass lists the service trade the car had already created: the Mishawaka Garage at 214–16 South Main, the Imperial Garage at 2301 Lincoln Way East, and an Overland Service Station behind 111 Lincoln Way West — repair and service points for cars sold elsewhere, the Overland station taking its name from the make it serviced. The shape is the classic first shape of the business: cars bought in the larger city or from a sideline agency, and kept running by Mishawaka garages.

A conflict in the book: The 1921 directory disagrees with itself about who ran the Hinkle branch. Its Mishawaka section names J. F. Rupp as the branch's manager; its South Bend section names Harry E. Hinkle — who lived in Mishawaka, at 318 West 1st — as branch manager. Both statements stand in the same volume, and both are printed here as they stand; the canvass's two sections were evidently compiled from two returns, and no source read settles which man held the desk in 1921.

Sources:

1. Polk's South Bend city directory, 1921 (Internet Archive, read first-hand) — the Mishawaka classified "Automobiles" listing (Mishawaka Battery Service, Florian S. and Frank O. Kelley, 702–04 S. Main, "Agents Elgin Cars"); the Mishawaka alphabetical and South Bend sections for the Hinkle branch, its two named managers printed above as the book gives them; the Mishawaka garage listings (Mishawaka Garage, Imperial Garage, Overland Service Station).