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1949 — 1963 · 2102 Lincoln Way West, then 2703 Lincoln Way West
The firm: The 1949 canvass lists Miller & Anderson — D. L. Miller and D. C. Anderson — at 2102 Lincoln Way West, selling Chrysler and Plymouth cars and Reo trucks: the city's Chrysler point, and the only truck franchise of the postwar field that the classified list names besides the car lines. By 1956 the firm has become one man's: D. L. Miller Auto Sales stands at 2703 Lincoln Way West, at the far west end of the row near Stewart's old Kaiser-Frazer garage, in the used-car and body end of the trade rather than the new-car classifieds; the 1963 canvass still lists the business, with staff, at work. The Chrysler-Plymouth new-car point, meanwhile, leaves no Mishawaka listing in 1963 at all — Jordan had dropped the lines in taking Ford, and no successor house appears in the canvass.
The open thread: The Chrysler lines return to the Mishawaka record a generation later in another house's hands: the South Bend Tribune's 2004 account of the Gates group lists a Gates Town & Country store in Mishawaka, and the city's Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram point today stands at 120 West McKinley Avenue as Michiana Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. Whether the Town & Country point descends from Miller's franchise by any succession, and when the McKinley Avenue store opened, are not documented in the sources read; the Tribune's morgue and the franchise record are the settling sources, and the thread is printed open rather than tied.
Sources:
- Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka directories, 1949, 1956 and 1963 (read first-hand) — the Miller & Anderson classified listing (Chrysler and Plymouth cars, Reo trucks, 2102 Lincoln Way W.) and the D. L. Miller Auto Sales listings of 1956 (2703 Lincoln Way W.) and 1963; the absence of a Chrysler new-car listing from the 1963 Mishawaka record.
- South Bend Tribune, 2004 (library ProQuest summary) — Gates Town & Country among the group's stores, in Mishawaka.