Wanted - Photos / Lakewood Motors, CA

[Toyotageek]

Hi everyone,

Please excuse my user ID! I'm new here. My name is Mike.

Back in the 60's and 70's my dad worked at Lakewood Motors which was located in the city of Lakewood CA at the corner of South St and Woodruff. He was the general manager there. I worked there myself as a teenager in the mid 70's as the janitor. I found the Samba.com while searching for images - someone had some Lakewood Motors license frames posted.

I am trying to find old photos of the dealership - actuall photos or old newspaper clippings. If anyone has anything to share I would certainly appreciate hearing from you.

Thank you!
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Michael

[Toyotageek]

Sorry to dig this old topic out of the archives, but, I'm still looking for anything related to Lakewood Motors. Especially photos of the dealership..... Anyone? Anything?
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Michael

[KTPhil]

Looks to be gone now:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8587079,-118.11891...56!6m1!1e1

You might contact the current Lakewood dealer. Sometimes they have connections to older/closed/moved dealerships:
Larry H. Miller Volkswagen

You might see if the local papers have an archive of ads or photos. A dying resource, but maybe you will get lucky.

[Toyotageek]

Thanks for the reply. The dealership has been gone a long time now - my guess since the late 80's, possibly early 90's. Last time that I was physically at the dealership was around 1978/79. I visited the location some years ago, it is now a Ross store - but across the street was still the old Churches Chicken. I know a couple of the body shop guys started their own shop, which I think is still in business. I've thought about trying to hunt down photos from newspaper archives, or maybe the city has something, but working full time kind of prevents that...

I found one aerial photo, from 1962 of the intersection of South Street and Woodruff. You can see the dealership buildings, but I don't think they were a VW dealer at the time.

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Michael

[Jon Schmid]

Must be the early '60's. You can still see open land.