Potamkin Chevrolet

[Dave Mellor NJ]

In the latest Antique Automobile there was a story about a 72 Corvette owned and restored by Mel Mann. The car is said to have been originally bought at Potamkin Chevrolet on Market

St. In Philadelphia, Pa.

Potamkin Chevrolet was the largest Chevy dealer in Pa. and they flooded the airwaves and newspapers with advertising from the 50s to the 80s but they were at 1101 S Broad St (Broad and Washington) not Market St. It's possible they had a branch on Market St but I never heard of it.

There was a post recently about how Broad St was auto dealer row for many years in Philly until dealers flocked to the suburbs like everywhere. Although most dealers were on North Broad, South Broad had their share as well.

Victor Potamkin started out selling fish and chicken, first with his father in South Philly then in Camden NJ. While in Camden he employed Jersey Joe Walcott and got into the boxing business while backing him.

He got into the car business opening a Lincoln Mercury dealership in Northeast Philly in 1947 with Matt Slapp, another big name in car dealers. He had trouble due to the large Jewish population in NE Philly still resenting Henry's anti-Semitism so he gave a new Lincoln to the first Prime Minister of Israel and sales took off.

He left the Lin-Mer business to Matt and got into Chevys where he was enormously successful. GM persuaded him to take over a struggling Cadillac franchise in Manhattan. He turned that around with the saturation advertising and volume merchandising the likes of which were seldom seen in Cadillac dealing.

Now the name is on dealerships all across the country but the Broad St location is long gone. In the late 80s the building was remodeled into the Pennsylvania Ballet Co, the lower end of Philly's "Avenue of the Arts". I worked on the job converting the building (electrician) and looked all around but there was nothing left from the car days.

[rons49]

My father in law bought a 73 Sedan Deville from Potamkin in NYC. Very low price but, you could wait weeks for a service appointment.

[Bleach]

My parents 67 Impala was sold by a Potamkin Chevy dealership in Hollywood, CA. I wish they still had the car. Unfortunately they sold it around 1975 or 76.

[West Peterson]

Dave,

You are correct. Mel made a mistake in saying Market Street. However, the car is NOT restored, it was just detailed where needed.

[5219]

My grandfather, David Harris, sold his chicken store at 527 Kaighn Avenue in Camden NJ to Victor Potamkin in about 1935. This was long before he was in the car business. My father told me that Victor started in business as a delivery boy for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He won a trip to the 1933 Chicago Worlds' Fair by signing up more new subscribers than any other delivery boy.

The Lincoln agency came after the war. During that time, the King of Romania visited the US. Victor Potamkin actually got in to see him and sold him a Lincoln. The Lincoln that went to Israel was a different story. Chaim Weitzman was the first President of Israel. Weitzman was British by birth and Oxford-educated. By all accounts, he was a very vain and pretentious person. Victor Potamkin got American Jews to contribute to build Weitzman a Lincoln Phaeton identical to the one used by the White House for President Truman.

When Weitzman got the car, he used it a few times. The Israeli public was very disapproving of such an ostentatious display in a new and struggling country. Weitzman stopped using the Lincoln. It is my understanding that nobody knew what to do with it and that it sat outside for many years and was finally junked.

The Chevrolet dealership on South Broad Street was originally Robinson Chevrolet. I believe that Potamkin was married at the time to Robinson's daughter and that she inherited the business. I was told that for many years, every Potamkin Chevrolet had a Motorola radio installed by Potamkin because there was more profit in them than there was in the Delco radios from GM. Victor Potamkin sold enough cars that GM allowed him to get away with this.

The other dealerships and the Cadillac agency in Manhattan came later. People that watched New York television remember Luba, Victor's wife, doing the Potamkin Cadillac commercials on TV.

Victor Potamkin was very friendly with Edward Cole, father of the Chevy V-8 and later President of GM. When Cole retired from GM, he and Victor bought Checker Motors. Victor turned the running of the dealerships over to his son and began working with Cole to develop and market a successor to the famous Checker Taxi.

When Ed Cole died in a plane crash, that business ended. Luba got Alzheimer's disease and Victor retired. I believe they are both gone now.

It was fun to see his name come up. They don't make car dealers like him any more.

[Dave Mellor NJ]

Thanks for expanding on the story.I read that he was losing money on the Camden store due to intense competition locally. He hit on the idea of cutting the chickens up and selling them by the piece. He had a slogan,"Be smart, Buy a part".. He had continuous ads at the Philly store"$1,000 guaranteed trade-in on any car you can drive, push or drag in"along with a cartoon of a decrepit wreck on a tow truck.I was always beyond belief that some people didn't think they'd just jack up the price or not discount. But it worked in grand fashion, in his obituary in about 96 they said he was a billionaire. Luba died a few years before him. His sons are both enormously wealthy as well, claiming some 54 dealerships of all makes. Here's another pic from 59.

[Dave Mellor NJ]

Here's a pic from "Vette" magazine in which Pillip Salas relates his dad was a salesman at Potamkin when the Corvette first came out. He's driving this demonstrator.