To get an idea of how long J.C. Lewis Ford has been selling cars and trucks in Savannah, consider what the dealership accepted as a trade-in on their first deal.
“A horse,” said Walter Lewis, who now heads the family business on Abercorn Street. “Or so we’ve been told.”
Lewis’ lack of first-hand knowledge is forgivable — he wouldn’t be born until decades later. He is the third generation of the Lewis family to operate the now 100-year-old dealership.
His grandfather, Julius Curtis Lewis, bought the business from another long familiar name in Savannah’s business community, the Weeks family, in 1912. Jim Weeks was preoccupied with the business his father helped start, Fox & Weeks Funeral Directors, and all five of his sons turned down the opportunity to run the Ford dealership.
“They didn’t think Fords would catch on, that the other automobile manufacturers at the time would crowd them out,” said Elmo Weeks, Jim Weeks’ grandson. “And in those days, you not only had to sell customers a car, you had to teach them how to drive it, how to change tires, how to repair it. Running the dealership didn’t look too promising.”
With the lack of family interest, Weeks offered the business to his friend and golfing buddy, J.C. Lewis. Lewis initially refused for lack of the $500 Weeks was asking for the franchise. When Weeks offered to front Lewis the money, a Savannah business empire was born.
“Mr. Lewis’ son Curtis was my age, and I told him many times my granddaddy picked the wrong business to stay in,” Elmo Weeks said. “He should have kept the Ford business and sold the funeral homes.”
Building an empire
Ford offered just a handful of models at the time J.C. Lewis put his name on the dealership that was located downtown on Bull Street across from the old Desoto Hotel.
Lewis did more business in horses than cars in the early years. Cars were expensive and made one at a time or in small batches. Henry Ford didn’t open his first assembly line until December 1913.
“Cars were definitely luxury items at the time,” Lewis said. “The assembly line changed all that by making cars more affordable. The rest is history.”
Fortunate timing may have helped Lewis launch the business, but he and his successors’ conservative approach to business have sustained it. For years, J.C. Lewis Ford carried a “very low” inventory of cars, and the staff consisted of Lewis, an office assistant and a mechanic.
That assistant, Sam Steinberg, would stay with the company for eight decades and would be the first of what Walter Lewis classifies as the key to the business’ longevity: “Good help.”
Steinberg temporarily led the company upon J.C. Lewis’ death in 1942. Lewis’ son, J.C. Lewis Jr., was a teenager, and Steinberg minded the store until Lewis finished schooling.
Ford was by far the world’s most popular automobile at the time of the elder Lewis’ death, and business grew even more following World War II.
J.C. Lewis Jr. proved to be a brilliant businessman, opening additional Ford dealerships in Daytona Beach and Melbourne, Fla., adding new brands to his Savannah dealership, and investing in tractor sales, taxi cab businesses, television and radio stations, hotels, life insurance, yacht sales and real estate.
“My father and grandfather’s success was largely because they had pretty conservative business philosophies,” said J. Curtis Lewis III, a local lawyer and the brother of J.C. Lewis Ford’s current leader, Walter. “They both borrowed plenty of money in their time, but they were wise in their investments and managed to never get into too much debt. And they were good at identifying good people.
“If you have good folks selling a good product and you don’t mess it up along the way, it’s something that can go on and on.”
Visionary thinking
Lewis Jr.’s foresight on southside Savannah’s potential cemented the J.C. Lewis Ford legacy.
He moved the dealership from downtown to the southside in 1962, first to a plot just south of DeRenne Avenue. Later that decade, Lewis talked Jacksonville car dealer Dan Vaden into building a dealership on farm land Lewis owned south of Montgomery Crossroad with the promise Lewis would build next to him.
Vaden opened his business in 1968, followed soon after by Lewis’ new dealership. The area would quickly become car central, home to several dealerships.
“Dad was a visionary, always thinking of the future,” Walter Lewis said. “He couldn’t sit still.”
Lewis Jr. had six children, all of whom grew up around the business. Lewis III remembers as a boy visiting his father at work and spending hours “chasing my brothers and sisters around the dealership.” All worked part-time jobs with their father as teenagers, and all are active in the family businesses, in one form or another, today.
Walter Lewis joined his father’s staff upon his graduation from the University of Georgia in 1975 and worked his way up from department to department. By the mid 1980s, Lewis Jr. was devoting much of his time to his other business interests as well as his philanthropic efforts and turned over operations of the car dealership to Walter.
“I can’t tell you exactly when I took over; it just kind of evolved,” Walter Lewis said.
Lewis Jr.’s presence remained, though, even following his 2005 death. Walter Lewis anticipates the business will endure another 100 years and notes the fourth generation of his father’s family numbers 11 children.
“Some Lewis will be sitting here come our 200th anniversary,” Walter Lewis said. “Although they’ll probably be selling Ford-powered rocket ships.”
And taking cars on trade-in, just as their ancestors once did horses.