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1916 — 2024 · the association's afterlife and the wholesale trade
The association after 1916: The South Bend and Mishawaka Auto Trade Association that staged the 1916 show is the first and, in the sources read, the last named appearance of a joint dealers' association in the two cities' record. Dealer associations did not vanish from Indiana life — the state association's course runs through the century — but the local body's later course, its successor forms, and the run of later auto shows in the two cities are not documented in the sources read here, and are named as a gap: the South Bend Tribune's morgue and the state association's records are the settling sources. What the record does show, in place of minutes, is the trade acting together in the ways the canvasses catch: the shared 1916 show at the start of the century's record, and Gates Chevrolet's sponsorship from 1957 of the Michiana Corvette Club — a dealer house underwriting the region's car culture as a matter of course — at its middle.
The wholesale trade:It is the one institution in this section that belongs to the dealers as a body rather than to any house, and its Mishawaka ground makes it this city's entry in the trade's institutional record.
The makers' men: This section also asks after dealers who were themselves figures of record — racers, promoters, officeholders. In the sources read, Mishawaka's dealers make the record as dealers and as citizens, not as racers or officeholders: the strongest documented public course beside a showroom is Jordan Kapson's — a million-dollar university endowment given in his own name and printed in the Jordan entry — and the strongest founding figure is L. O. Gates, a grocer who sold cars on the side and built the house that outlasted downtown. No Mishawaka dealer stands in the sources read as a racing driver or a promoter at documented strength; the statement is printed as the negative it is, open to correction from the period sporting press, which is its settling source.
Sources:
- South Bend News-Times, 4 May 1916 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the association and the show, as in the 1916 entry above.
- Michiana Corvette Club, the club's own history — founded 1957, sponsored by Gates Chevrolet of Mishawaka, as in the Gates entry above.