Editor's Welcome

by David Reed

May 30,2008

A classic advertisement for Joe Machens Ford from back in the 1970s, features photos of Joe Machens and his son, Dave. The script above the cute little boy's head reads, "My dad sells Fords."

The ad is on the company's Web site, along with this bit of history: "It all began on May 5, 1969. Joe Machens moved from St. Louis to Columbia and purchased the franchise from Tom Allton."

The original dealership was located downtown in the building on East Broadway where customers now go to buy beer, The Fieldhouse bar.

The Web site contains another fascinating historical nugget from 1979 that describes how Machens decided to start selling mopeds and motor scooters. The energy crisis was causing gas prices to spike, and customers were looking for economical transportation.

The experiment ended after a few months, but it demonstrated market savvy that the company maintained through the years.

Machens Motors bought and sold several franchises, including Isuzu, Honda, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche. They bought the BMW franchise in 1984, the year after Gary Drewing joined the dealership as a partner. Machens died a decade ago and Dave and Gary bought the Toyota franchise in 1989, from Legend Automotive Group on Vandiver.

Rusty, Gary's son, came on board in 2005, and Gary bought Dave's half of the company two years ago.

Now, more than half of the time that somebody in Columbia buys a car or truck, he or she is writing the check to one of Machens' dealerships.

But an upstart is gaining market share at a brisk pace, Perry Nissan and Chevrolet, on what used to be the northern side of town, where there's a similar story to tell.

R. Edward Perry founded the dealership in 1961, and his son Justin, along with partner Dennis Harper, bought the company in 1983. Justin bought out Harper a few years later and obtained the Nissan franchise in 1987.

Now, sales at the Toyota franchise and at Nissan, which moved last July to a larger space at Providence and Interstate 70, are outpacing Ford and Chevrolet by wide margins.

To see the details of where the competition stands today, the CBT obtained vehicle sales records from the state Department of Revenue, crunched the data and analyzed the trends. We found some pretty wild swings in the popularity of different models, in part because Columbians, as they were in Machens' scooter-selling days, are looking for more economical forms of transportation.

Popularity: unranked [?]