THE EARLY YEARS

Tom: Did you have any involvement with French cars in general before you worked for French Cars Inc.?

​

Frank: Well, I had a couple of French cars before working at the dealership. I had an 11B Traction Avant and later, a Renault 4CV, both of which were great cars. Plus of course, during the time I was at French Cars Inc., I drove DS’s, 4CV’s, Panhards, and other weird and wonderful cars.

 

Tom: So besides Citroën and Panhard, French Cars Inc. also carried Renault?

​

Frank: Well, we briefly carried Renault. But of course the model they had then was the Dauphine which I won’t go into since we all know what kind of car that was!

​

Tom: What was your job description there?

 

Frank: I was a salesman.

​

Tom: And besides yourself, Ralph Gage and Jack Woods, who else worked there?

 

Frank: There was only one other person and that was a full time mechanic - a Dutchman by the name of Rolf - I cannot remember his last name - but he was very good at working on Citroëns and Panhards - or any other car you brought him. The guy was a wonder.

 

Tom: What sort of interest did cars such as the Citroëns and Panhards create amongst the general public?

 

Frank: Well, it was scant to be kind. The people who were mostly interested in cars of this type were quite often Boeing engineers, as well as some university types. I guess you could call them eccentrics or those that were drawn towards something off of the beaten path. An interesting thing about this dealership is that it was in a little brick building on Broadway and East Union Street which was originally, sometime in the early part of the century, built as a dealership for Stearns-Knight automobiles! (A review of Seattle directories indicates Pierce Arrow cars were sold from this building as early as 1910 - Ed). Another interesting thing was that across the street (across Union) there was a place that for a short period of time sold Tatra and Skoda cars. They sold quite a few Skodas, but not many Tatras (surprisingly, since the Tatra was a much better car). It was quite an interesting era!

 

Tom: Do you recall selling many DS’s or Panhards?

 

Frank: No, we maybe sold 2 or 3 DS’s and maybe 1 or 2 Panhards and that was about it really.

 

Tom: Do you recall selling any 2CV’s?

 

Frank: Yeah, maybe we sold 1 or 2 in that time period.

 

Tom: How about Renaults, did you sell any of those?

 

Frank: No, not at all.
 

Tom: Did you have a car supplied by the dealership to drive around?

 

Frank: Yes, I drove a DS19 around and I also drove a Panhard on occasion. Once I went to a party given by Bill Muncy (a famous hydroplane driver at the time) at his house on Mercer Island. Somehow we got into a conversation about cars and anyway he became entranced about driving this Panhard I had brought to the party. So I said, “OK fine,” and we went around Mercer Island. It was an interesting experience. He really enjoyed driving it, but did not buy one.

 

Tom: When you had the DS demonstrator car to drive around, do you recall having any problems with it?

 

Frank: Not at all, not for a moment!
 

Tom: At one time you mentioned that the colors were not the most desirable?

 

Frank: Yes, at that time the color selections were very scant. I had a drab beige color. It was a real boring color. The last DS we had was a black one with a maroon velour interior and as I recall, it finally sold (after sitting on the showroom floor for months) to a fellow by the name of Bill Wakefield. He had a large Alaskan fishery concern - Wakefield Fisheries - or some such thing. It was a beautiful car!

 

Tom: Do you recall any problems that people had with these early cars?

​

Frank: The only problem I can recall was when people would occasionally put in the wrong hydraulic fluid, but mechanically they were durable.

 

Tom: Was there much in the way of support from the factory or training information?

 

Frank: Not really, besides the brochures (which we had to pay for) there wasn’t any support, not even for dealer signs or anything like that.

 

Tom: When a potential customer came in, did they have much knowledge of the DS and its features?

 

Frank: As a rule, no. They understood it was a French car but most had very little idea of the mechanical features of the car.

 

Tom: What kind of reaction would you get when you took them on a test drive?

 

Frank: Well, they were impressed, but that was the extent of it.

 

Tom: Were people scared of the complexity?

 

Frank: Not that I was aware of. At least none of them had related that at the time. People often thought it was strange that the brake was a little button on the floor. I have to relate this tale. The distributor for Citroën was in Portland and one year we had an auto show - I think it was 1957. So Ralph and I went down to Portland to pick up a couple of demos; an ID19 and a 2CV. The distributor had a 2CV truckette - I loved the thing. We all climbed in it and went out for lunch. We ended up taking the truckette and the ID back to Seattle. Ralph drove the ID and I drove the truckette. I think we left at about 4:00 in the afternoon. Forty-five miles an hour was about the best I could get out of it with my foot stuffed through the firewall! Back in those days Highway 99 was the main route home (a two lane road most of the way). As we were coming up, every once and a while I would have to pull over and let the traffic (that was bottled up behind me) get past. I didn’t get home ‘til midnight and I think the only time we stopped was once for gas!

 

Tom: Where was the auto show that year?

 

Frank: It was in what is now the Seattle Center. It was held in an exhibition hall that was later torn down to make way for the present-day Opera House.

 

Tom: Were there any other activities that French Cars Inc. did to try and promote the dealership?

 

Frank: No, we didn’t have any kind of budget for that kind of thing or for much in the way of advertising. We did take on a line of German trucks by the name of Tempo. These trucks were front wheel drive and very well built. They had a Triumph engine* in them and were basically a flatbed with wood sides that folded-up. They were great trucks, but at that time we were going through a bad economic period - essentially a recession - and no one was really buying that type of thing.

 

( * PCN editor Allan Meyer points out that Tempo trucks had a variety of engines including air-cooled VW, Heinkel or a British Austin engine - Ed).