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1921 — by 1963 · 215–217 Lincoln Way West, then 315 Lincoln Way West, then 609 East Jefferson Boulevard
The branch years: Mishawaka's Ford seller began as the eastern arm of a South Bend house. W. R. Hinkle Inc., William R. Hinkle president, held the Ford distributorship at 223–29 North Lafayette Boulevard in South Bend — the canvass styles the firm "FORD MOTOR CAR, W R Hinkle Inc Distributors," with Fordson tractors beside the cars — and its Mishawaka branch at 215–217 Lincoln Way West put the country's best-selling car on sale inside Mishawaka from the trade's first census. The branch is the city's first franchise point of record: a factory-line store, staffed from across the river, on the street that would be Mishawaka's auto row for forty years.
The O'Neil house: By the 1956 canvass the Ford point is a Mishawaka corporation of its own: O'Neil Motor Co Inc, Ford and Ford Truck, at 315 Lincoln Way West, with Thomas J. O'Neil Jr. as president and general manager and a used-car lot across the street at 216 Lincoln Way West; the firm advertised heavily in the 1956 volume, its name running at the head of page after page. The O'Neil name was on the Ford trade on both sides of the river by then — the 1949 South Bend classified had already carried an Arthur R. O'Neil as a Ford-house vice-president — and the Mishawaka store is the family's own point, a hundred numbers west of the old Hinkle branch ground.
The succession: Between the 1956 and 1963 canvasses the O'Neil store leaves the Mishawaka record, and the Ford point stands at 609 East Jefferson Boulevard under Jordan H. Kapson, in the Jordan entry below. The date and mechanism of that transfer — whether the Kapson house bought the O'Neil point, or Ford re-awarded the franchise — are not documented in the sources read; the Polk volumes of 1957 to 1962, which survive on microfilm and by subscription, are the settling sources, and the gap is named rather than filled. What the canvasses settle is the sequence itself.
The point's course, in one line: The Ford point in Mishawaka runs: the South Bend distributor's branch at 215–217 Lincoln Way West in 1921; the O'Neil family's own store at 315 Lincoln Way West by 1956; the Kapson family's Jordan Ford City at 609 East Jefferson Boulevard by 1963; the Jordan group's sale to RFJ Auto Partners in 2016 and RFJ's acquisition by Sonic Automotive on 6 December 2021 — and Jordan Ford sells Ford cars in Mishawaka today under the Jordan name.
Sources:
- Polk's South Bend city directories, 1921, 1949, 1956 and 1963 (Internet Archive, read first-hand) — the Hinkle distributorship and Mishawaka branch entries; the 1949 South Bend classified's O'Neil vice-presidency; the 1956 O'Neil Motor Co Inc entry (Thomas J. O'Neil Jr., president and general manager, 315 Lincoln Way W., used-car lot 216 Lincoln Way W.) and its running-head advertising; the 1963 Jordan Ford City entry at 609 E. Jefferson Blvd.
- Sonic Automotive Inc., Form 8-K and press release, September–December 2021 (SEC filings) — the acquisition of RFJ Auto Partners, completed 6 December 2021; the Jordan succession's last step stands in the Jordan entry below.