By Ellen Crawford
The Forum - 05/02/1999

A Corwin Motor Co. advertisement from 1916.

The business wheels in the Corwin family have been turning in North Dakota since 1914.

That's the year Samuel Wickham Corwin established a dealership in Bismarck.

Today the business is headed by his grandson, Tim Corwin, president of Corwin Automotive Group, a company composed of Corwin Chrysler Plymouth Dodge and Corwin Buick Toyota in Fargo and Eisinger Motors in Kalispell, Mont.

Charlie and the late William Corwin bridged the business gap between the founding and continuing generations.

Wickham Corwin came to Fargo in 1907 from New Jersey as a representative of the Gaar Scott Co., a national implement concern. He moved to Bismarck in 1914 to launch his automobile dealership.

Charlie Corwin said his father started with a single employee and three automobile offerings - the Buick, Saxon and Mitchell. Those were well-known models among the hundreds available in the early years of the automobile. Cars were hardly a hot commodity at the time, especially in winter months.

"He told me once that the first February they were in business, the only thing they sold was 20 gallons of gasoline," Charlie Corwin said.

The first big business breakthrough for his father came in 1924 with the introduction of the Chrysler, named for Walter P. Chrysler, a Buick vice president who went on to found the Chrysler Corp.

Charlie Corwin, born in 1920, said his father was a real fan of Chrysler - the man and the auto.

"He became one of the first distributors of Chrysler," Charlie Corwin said. "He said Buick made a lousy car and that Chrysler came in with a real automobile."

A 1924 Chrysler Towncar, donated by the Corwin family, is on display at Bonanzaville in West Fargo. Charlie Corwin said the family used to drive a similar model to its property on Big Sand Lake near Park Rapids, Minn. The Corwin boys later learned to drive in that model.

"It would go 75 mph if you wanted to," Charlie Corwin says.

Neil Churchill joined the business in 1925 and company became Corwin-Churchill Motor Co. Charlie Corwin says Churchill "was a hell of a salesman - a smart fellow and real promoter."

The business sold cars retail in Bismarck and wholesale to smaller dealerships in western North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana.

"Dad had butchers and bankers and everybody else selling a few cars," Charlie Corwin said.

The business expanded east in 1937 with the acquisition of Murphy Motor Co. That business became Corwin-Churchill Motors and was located on NP Avenue. Corwin moved to Fargo and Churchill stayed with the Bismarck business.

The Fargo business later added the new Plymouth line.

A Corwin wholesale parts division kept the company afloat during World War II, when the country cut back car production but encouraged parts production to keep pre-war cars on the road and the country moving.

Business boomed after World War II, as veterans returned and spent their money on homes and new cars.

Charlie Corwin, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and William Corwin, who was involved in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Italy, were among the returning veterans and joined their father's firm when he returned.

"He must have made some pretty good money in those years. We got healthy in those years," Charlie Corwin said of his father. He said he made $250,000 one year in the late '40s, pre tax.

Buyers were plentiful but cars were not. And for better or worse, he said, his father was an honest operator. Some dealers would take money under the table and then make a car available. Not Wickham Corwin.

"He kept a list (of those waiting for cars), and he adhered to that list," Charlie Corwin said.

Nobody moved up the list. Not even those who had bought from Corwin in the past. "He could have taken better care of his regular customers," Charlie Corwin said of his father.

The business went through a big change in 1949 when Chrysler pulled its distributorships, which meant Corwin no longer had a wholesale relationship with small-town dealerships.

Charlie and William Corwin began to run the business in the 1950s.

They also added General Trading Co., a hardware and automotive parts outlet.

Charlie ran the auto side of things while William ran the auto parts side.

The Corwins took full ownership of Corwin-Churchill in 1952 when Churchill retired.

The Corwins later sold their interest in the Bismarck dealership.

Charlie Corwin said his father let them do business as they saw fit.

"He almost to a fault never taught us anything about the business," he said.

They moved the auto dealership to the auto dealership area north of Fargo's West Acres in 1975. Charlie's son Tim joined the business the same year as a salesman, after graduating with a business degree from the University of Utah.

Charlie Corwin said he didn't push his son to go into the automobile business.

"I just didn't think that was a good way to do it," he said. "But he understood business and he understood selling."

In 1980, Tim Corwin founded Tim Corwin Buick, not far from the family's main dealership. A year later he approached his father and said he wanted to purchase the family business.

"I never heard any better words in my life," Charlie Corwin said. "He turned out to be a hell of a lot more aggressive than I was."

Tim Corwin in 1985 added the Toyota line, expanded Tim Corwin Buick and launched Corwin Collision Center and Corwin Car Care Center. In 1986 he acquired Hustad Dodge and later merged it with the Corwin Chrysler Plymouth dealership.

He added Eisinger Motors of Kalispell, Mont., in 1994 and the Oldsmobile, Cadillac and GMC Truck dealership there in 1996. Tim Corwin brought aboard minority partner Dan Wilson of Fargo in 1995.

Tim Corwin said consolidation, acquisition and multiple-brand dealerships are trends that will continue in the automobile sales industry.

"It used to be that an auto dealership was a lot like a general store: one family, one dealership, one auto franchise," Tim Corwin said. "The thinking was that if you had other stores, you wouldn't devote all your energy to the single entity.

"But not too long ago car companies started to realize that a good dealer wants more than one store, and that there are advantages to get that dealer involved in more than one store."

He's currently looking to add another dealership somewhere in the Rocky Mountain region. If he does, it will be a business decision he makes on his own.

Charlie Corwin would rather travel and enjoy retirement than hang around and offer automotive advice.

"He lets me do it," Tim Corwin said. "When I took over, he said 'It's your deal. Run it any way you want.'"