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 Betreff des Beitrags: Jack Griffith
BeitragVerfasst: Do 12. Jan 2017, 14:34 
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Registriert: Do 19. Jun 2008, 07:40
Beiträge: 1931
Wohnort: Hochheim
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For those of you who never got to know Jack Griffith I offer a small remembrance of his life, the chapter as written in the book, The Griffith Years.

Jack Griffith
by: Mike Mooney

Jack Griffith never stood still a day in his life. He was born running and hasn't stopped yet. Trying to keep up with Andrew Jackson "Jack"

Griffith was a full time job in itself and in his world of business there was no difference.

Growing up in Jackson Heights on the western end of Long Island, Jack was close enough to the big city for the activity that he craved but it was, then, far enough out in the sticks to qualify as country for a young upstart.

Early on, this ardent fan of the Glenn Miller Band had proved that he was headed for something that had an engine, made noise and went fast. North Beach Airport, now named LaGuardia International Airport, near the shores of the Long Island Sound, was a neighborhood fixture. Like any other youngster, Jack yearned to get his driver's license and the aerodrome parking lot was a safe venue to get the necessary practice.

Jack's mom, a housewife whose imagination sparked a hobby of writing mystery stories, was also a talented handwriting expert and his dad was employed in the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

At that time of Jack's life, the Vanderbilt family had been using their fifty-mile long private roadway as the site of their annual Vanderbilt Cup races

originating in Queens County and finishing at its eastern terminus of Lake Ronkonkoma in Suffolk County. On the international Formula One scene, Tazio Nuvolari was scorching his legendary driving style into the record books.

But rising out of the depths of the Great Depression the nations of the world were affixed to the nasty business of war. The automotive giants had to focus on the war efforts and the assembly lines no longer turned out the nifty and artistic renderings of the Thirties.

But then the war ended and the production lines were again looking to the needs of the civilian population for direction. Emerging from the memories of

World War II, Jack Griffith, a twenty-one year old New Yorker, was ready to take on the automotive business world.

One of the business giants of the war was Henry J. Kaiser, an industrial titan who had turned from his wartime ship building empire toward the post-war

automobile industry. The odd-looking, yet futuristic Kaiser and Frazer cars looked good to Jack Griffith and he started as a salesman for a Kaiser-Frazer dealership in Glen Cove, Long Island. The cast was being forged.

Glen Cove was in the Kaiser-Frazer distributor territory of New York City. The original distributor was Regional Motor Sales, 1710 Broadway; in September of 1946, Earl "Madman" Muntz acquired the operation from the factory, and operated it as Muntz Motor Car Company (retail dealership as well as distributor) at the same address until the end of 1947 when he sold the operation back to Kaiser-Frazer Sales Corporation.

The factory continued to operate the distributorship as Kaiser-Frazer Sales Corporation until after Kaiser-Frazer acquired the operations of Willys-Overland in early 1953. After that, the K-F operation was phased out, activities moved to the factory-owned Willys facility

Editor's note: Earl Muntz was in the right place (Los Angeles) at the right time (1941). During the war years, he became the biggest

used car dealer in the world. By 1947 Earl had continued in his command of the used car market, but had taken on the largest Kaiser-

Frazer dealership in the U.S. In 1947 alone he sold $72,000,000 worth of new and used cars. Muntz sold 22,000 new K-F cars that year, which is really impressive when you stop to think, the total K-F output for 1947 was only 147,000.

During his slack time as a car salesman Jack decided to branch out in his interests and after taking a correspondence course in "Sound Engineering" he qualified to work in the professional recording studios in the big city. The 1948 recording of the vocal by Dusty Fletcher of 'Open The Door,

Richard was co-engineered by Jack Griffith. This short career was made even shorter when the commuting to New York became too tedious and time consuming so Jack hung it up for a while to concentrate on cars at the Kaiser-Frazer dealership.

It didn't take too long for the entrepreneurial skills to emerge and Jack and a fellow salesman decided to open a used car lot. The manufacturers couldn't fill the showrooms fast enough and America needed the mobility, even if it was a prewar clunker.

This idea worked for awhile but something just didn't fit. The partnership dissolved and Jack decided that sound and audio engineering was his calling.

Radio station WKBS broadcasting from Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY was looking for a partner and Jack signed on but his heart was still heavily entrenched in the automobile.

An upstart auto manufacturer from upstate Buffalo was looking for distributors to sell its new car dubbed 'The Playboy' and Jack was interested.

He called on a friend, Bill Odom, a noted airplane pilot, and the two wanted to form a Long Island distributorship but when the car failed to materialize the idea went into the circular file and Jack went back to Kaiser-Frazer for a short time.

It was 1949 and Jack was anxious to have his own dealership, a showroom and a business that would anchor him to the automotive community as more than a salesman.

Packard Corporation was expanding the line with their 'upside-down bathtub' styled cars aimed at the luxury market. In Rockville Centre, a small but

wealthy community in Nassau County on the south shore of Long Island, Jack took a chance and bought a Packard franchise. This bedroom community of New York City was ripe for the demographic market that Packard was seeking out and Griffith stuck his toe into the cold, cold waters of seriously selling cars.

This worked well and lasted until 1953, an historic benchmark year in the Packard corporate history. The body had gone through a major change and moved into the more flowing lines that marked the opulence of the chrome age. After four years in the business Jack thought it was time for a change and sold the dealership that year. He and John White got together with a new dealership and named it White-Griffith Motors DeSoto and Plymouth. Located on Route 106 in Hicksville, the new shop was in a higher growth area and the baby boomers were buying.

The high performance market was just starting to rev up and the MoPar top dogs weren't going to be left in the dust. High speed cars and larger-than-life engines were rumbling around the streets and hot rodders were talking more and more about this new thing called 'high performance.'

Ronnie Householder, the head of Chrysler racing was doing his best to build cars for the next generation and in 1955 the doors were flung open. One of these cars, a Plymouth sedan, was prepped and tuned at White-Griffith Motors for a stab at the land speed record that year. It was the first year of the V-8 Plymouth and Ronnie wanted to make it the fastest one on the block.

When it came to choosing a driver, Householder selected Phil Walters a Volkswagen dealer from Manhasset who often drove in stock cars at the old

Freeport stadium under the pseudonym of Ted Tappet. When the dust settled at Daytona they walked away with the class trophy and set the bar a few notches higher for the competition.

A few years earlier, in 1951, Walters was teamed up with Briggs Cunningham at the 24 Hours of LeMans driving the incredible Le Monstre, Cunningham's wildly unbelievable creation.

As the decade wore on, the cars got faster, the engines got more powerful and the factories were taking note of the Win On Sunday, Sell On Monday approach to marketing and Jack Griffith didn't sit still. The DeSoto and Plymouth signs came down and up went the Ford signs.

With John White no longer in the partnership Lou Benny signed on in 1957 and White-Griffith Ford was born. The muscle-car era was well entrenched on the front pages of the motorsports magazines and the manufacturers were moving gobs of cars out America's showrooms.

Every one of the Big Three had their big and powerful engines. Chevrolet had the Power Pack, Chrysler had their 300, Oldsmobile had the Rocket and Ford had the Thunderbird.

Griffith would begin to build the dealership's reputation on the high performance image that Dearborn was banking on and he decided to do it well.

During the late Fifties and early Sixties, often called the 'Golden Years' of the high performance automobile industry, 'muscle cars' were being introduced on an almost-weekly basis.

Jack Griffith was an automobile entrepreneur and was in love with the high performance aspect of the beast. These factors along with the indomitable

spirit of this man would soon blend together to give birth to a new car, The Griffith.

_________________
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Toni
www.tvr.at

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