Inward 1903, St. Cloud Bicycle-Store Owner Stephen Tenvoorde Signed A Dealership Agreement With Ford Motor Co. To Sell Cars. Today, Tenvoorde Ford Is The World's Oldest Ford Dealership.
Stephen Tenvoorde was an industrious young man. He started his receive blacksmith shop inwards his twenties. Then he started selling bicycles, he repaired them too. He loved to tinker. "Evidently when the commencement automobile came out it caught his interest," Jack Tenvoorde says. "So he brought the commencement automobile to St. Cloud, a Milwaukee Steamer, upward the Oxen trail from Minneapolis. That was inwards 1899 inwards 1903 he went to convey inwards Henry Ford, together with he was the 2d individual to expire a dealer... only the 1st individual has long since sold out, together with doesn't instruct to motility the oldest dealership afterward that 2d of sale. During World War II Cy Tenvoorde was forced to seat off all of his salesmen, except one. The dealership concentrated on repairing carburetors, fuel pumps, generators, ignitions, distributors, transmissions, crankshafts together with re-building engines Used cars were repaired together ...