The Ford Dealership, Volumes I, II, III, and IV
by Henry L. Dominguez
These volumes are not your average or usual coffee table photo-rich books for, individually and collectively, they have real gravitas—both in content and in presentation. Physically, they collectively contain just shy of 1,500 pages and tip the scale at nearly 20 pounds for all four are printed on a heavy stock that reproduces each historic image clearly and crisply.
Those pages show the photos landscape one per page and sometimes one image requiring two full pages with captions either outside the photo or printed in a corner of those printed full bleed—as, yes, each of the curated images is captioned with dealer name, location, as well as a bit about the cars shown and where it had been originally sourced.
Ace Motor Sales, on the front of the dust jacket of Volume I, opened in Woodbury, New Jersey in 1913 and is still doing business there 111 years later. It is the thirteenth-oldest Ford dealer in the nation. This image is circa 1949/50 as indicated by the 1950 station wagon seen prominently through the showroom window. Back cover is Laramie (Wyoming) Auto Company showing what is likely a new owner of this just-introduced in 1920 center-door body style Model T.
Knowing the identity of that curator/author is instructive for he is also the one who, over the years amounting to decades, has been finding, obtaining, researching, and finding still more of the images and then carefully selecting and organizing those reproduced in each volume and captioning them. Dominguez traces his fascination with Ford to age 15 when he accompanied his dad who was shopping for, and eventually purchased new, a Ford pickup. Today Dominguez is as surprised as anyone that his enthusiasm and interest in Ford hasn’t subsided one whit. Not to overlook that that interest has resulted in his writing several Ford-related titles, two of which have been reviewed on this site.
The neon sign tells you the name of the dealership. It was located in South Bend, Indiana and this snap was taken December 1944. Back cover of dust jacket is an image from a FoMoCo dealership design manual.
Photos in these books are as old as 1903 and as recent as the 1970s just as each book’s subtitle delineates. There’s no narrative text but that doesn’t mean there isn’t interesting information offered, including, as said, the original source of each. Most images are, understandably black and white but, especially in the second and fourth volumes, there are a couple dozen in color. Illustrating this commentary are eight of the images reproduced on each volume’s dust jacket.
A decidedly “glittered” 1936 coupe photographed in the holiday showroom window December 1935 of Eddie Steep Ford in Detroit, Michigan is on the front of the dust jacket. The color rendering on back is from a FoMoCo dealership design manual.
Some of those captions contain genuine pearls. For instance did you know that during the time Edsel was FoMoCo president (1919 to 1943), as he was extremely interested in aviation, he directed Ford dealers everywhere to paint the name of the town in which each was located on its roof large enough to be easily read from aloft. Then too, as a further service to aid pilots, they were asked to also paint an arrow pointing due north.
Other captions introduce readers to dealerships such as the Schmit Bros in Saukville, Wisconsin established in 1912 and still going strong to this day making it the eleventh oldest Ford dealer in the nation. Another caption elicited a smile with this dealership’s claim to be “The world’s smallest volume dealer.”
Dominquez writes in his introductory words in one of the volumes that for him “the early years are the most fascinating—the old cars, the old buildings, the old towns. But the later years . . . are becoming just as fascinating.” Looking closely at each image a viewer can learn a lot about the times from the décor inside and architecture out, and the clothing worn by the people in the pictures. All the elements combine to make these volumes very much pictorial histories of the life and times and enable reader/viewers to observe the growth and changes society experienced over the decades.
On front an image shot at night of the front of Earl Wallace Ford in Delray Beach, Florida with its bevy of ’57 model offerings. On the back cover is a design proposal for a dealership created by Ford’s first Design Vice-president, George W. Walker.
The newest addition to Ford Dealership photo histories is Volume IV covering 1939–1980. It also contains references not found in the prior three volumes. One is a list of the fifty Ford dealerships that are 100 years or more old with the current ranking of each along with city and state where each is located. Then there are two indices; one a listing by state and including eight in Canada, identifying by volume and page number where each is found. The other is alphabetical by dealer name.
Dominguez recently told your commentator that he has so many images that he’s working toward creating a fifth and perhaps even a sixth volume. As with the existing volumes, any that follow will be published by the Early Ford V-8 Foundation and sold exclusively from its Early Ford Foundation Museum located in Auburn, Indiana. Each volume may be purchased individually or collectively.
Copyright 2025 Helen V Hutchings, SAH (speedreaders.info)
The Ford Dealership, Volumes I, II, III, and IV
by Henry Dominguez
Early Ford V-8 Foundation
List Price: $50 each Vol I, II, III; $60 for Vol IV
–Volume I: 1903–1954
ISBN 13: 978 0 979 7701 20 (2022, 2nd ed)
399 pages, 356 b/w photos, hardcover
–Volume II: 1908–1970
ISBN 13: 978 0 615 4525 55 (2011)
380 pages, 307 b/w & 24 color photos, hardcover
–Volume III: 1903–1940
ISBN 13: 978 0 977 7701 06 (2022)
311 pages, 255 b/w photos, hardcover
RSS Feed - Comments
Phone / Mail / Email
RSS Feed
Facebook
Twitter
What explains the overlapping dates covered by the volumes? Were they updated with pictures that were acquired between volumes and therefore the books are not precisely sequential?
Thanks.
Henry Dominguez affirmed that your guess is spot on—-as he wrote in his introduction to Volume II, “My intent was to continue this second volume from 1955 through 2009, but I came across more fabulous photographs from these formative years–both in collections and from charitable Ford dealers–and I was compelled to include these in this volume . . . so the volumes ended up overlapping.”