Don Allen Chevrolet Dealership Retrospective
Spring—Fall
Location: Williams-Clyne Showroom
The Williams-Clyne Gallery will be home to our Don Allen Chevrolet Dealership Retrospective. In the 1950s, Don Allen was the largest Chevrolet dealership in the world, with locations in New York City, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Miami, and other American cities.
Founded by promotion visionary Donavan “Don” Allen, his enterprise Don Allen Chevrolet Co. introduced innovative marketing techniques.
In his 2009 article, David Kushma wrote:
The motto of Don Allen’s 16 dealerships was: “We are never satisfied until you are.” Allen’s definition of customer satisfaction included a big helping of show business and spectacle, along with sales and service.
“Allen’s extraordinary energy, flair, and showmanship transformed the business of selling automobiles into grand social events,” said the Automotive Hall of Fame, which inducted Allen in 1974.
That genius for promotion — whether advertising a dealership with a parade of clowns or the deployment of his company’s 35-foot blimp — helped make Allen’s auto retailing empire “one of the largest in the world,” The New York Times reported in a 1959 obituary.
Allen opened his first dealership, a Chevrolet store in Albany, N.Y., in 1936. Over the next two decades, he established 15 other high-volume General Motors dealerships east of the Mississippi River.
According to the Hall of Fame, Allen taught the industry valuable lessons about retail promotion and advertising.
His dealerships were among the first to turn auto sales into celebrations, with community picnics, carnivals and contests, and sponsorships of Little League baseball and Soap Box Derby races for young people.
He also remembered his roots. Allen was born in a dormitory at Rio Grande College in Ohio, where his parents worked. He donated $200,000 to the school in 1958 for a new administration building.
The success of his dealerships bought Allen an address on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
He understood that he had to offer customers more than fun and games. Many of his dealerships offered 24-hour repair service.
