60 Years Behind the Wheel. Bill Sherk

It started when I was removing boxes of general junk from the house to the garage to make more space. One of those boxes broke open and one item which came out wasn’t junk by any means. It was a copy of a business card for Brown’s Transfer, a company which hauled coal, coke, wood and did furniture moving as well. My mother often described my grandfather as a “go-getter” for business. I believe I see what she meant. Never was I so glad to have a cardboard box break open and to retrieve such an important item.

      People such as my grandfather made a great contribution to Burnaby.⁵

      JIM ERVIN CONTINUED: “MY GRANDFATHER’S business card was rather colourful with an orange border and oval logo. The lettering and cartoons are dark blue. On the back of the card was an ink blotter. Note the price of coal at $10.50 per ton.”

Press and Movie Photogs, 1919

      THESE EAGER PAPARAZZI HAD THEIR photo taken at Queen’s Park, Toronto, in 1919. The Ontario Legislature is just behind them. And the car they are sitting in is easy to identify. The “bow tie” logo on the radiator tells us it’s a Chevrolet.

      Louis Chevrolet was a race car driver who gave his name to the car that’s been the mainstay of General Motors almost from the beginning. Flamboyant and high-spending Billy Durant was the irrepressible entrepreneur who formed GM in 1908 by bringing several car companies together. He decided the future of the auto industry lay in consolidation — and he was right.

      But disagreements with the other directors led to his being ousted from the company. Determined to regain control, he started a new car company in 1911 to provide the leverage he needed to regain control of GM. The car was Chevrolet, and it put him back in power till he was ousted a second time — this time for good.

      Meanwhile, GM introduced the “490” Chev in 1915 (named for its advertised list price) to compete against Henry Ford’s Model T. Some of the early Chevrolets had six-cylinder engines, and even a V-8 around 1917. But these larger engines were dropped when GM decided the best place for Chevrolet was the low-priced mass market.

      Henry Ford for years had a virtual stranglehold on that market. It has been estimated that in 1920, half of all the cars on the road in the entire world were Model Ts.

      When this photo was taken in 1919, Chevrolet was simply one of several makes trying to pull sales away from Ford. Ten years later, it was a different story. The Chevy went from four cylinders to six in 1929 — and this challenge prompted Henry Ford to terminate his Model A and bring out the first low-priced V-8 in 1932.

Going Nowhere Fast, 1920

      WITH ALL THE BAD ROADS, even the best of cars broke down in the early days of motoring — including the Model T Ford shown here. But a broken axle was not a big problem. By 1920, Henry Ford had built several million Model Ts, and cheap replacement parts could be found at the nearest wrecking yard.