Ford dealer directories 1987 and 1995

[Eyersey1234]

My latest purchase from the bay of E arrived today, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the dealers listed in it and see if they are still trading or if not what is there now. To start with I shall look at the old Humberside area.  The following dealers are listed 

Crystal Ford Wednesday Market Beverley, now a Boyes store. A new purpose built showroom was built in the late 80s or early 90s, going through several changes of name the building is currently occupied by Right Car

Richardson Ford Hamilton Road Bridlington. Still trading and now has an Omoda Jaecoo franchise alongside Ford

F Howard Long & Son Eastoft Road Crowle. No longer trading.

Richardson Ford 47 Middle Street North Driffield. Still trading though now located on Westgate following the 1993 fire. Also a GWM Ora dealer now. The old showroom is now a painter and decorators shop

Rainbow Motor Company Boothferry Road Goole. Long since closed though the Ford dealer moved to Rawcliffe Road, Stoneacre are now just a service centre for Ford and also have a Geely franchise as well now

Hartford Motors Corporation Road Grimsby.  Now known as Hartwell and just an approved repairer 

Johnsons Garage Thorn Road Hedon. No longer trading, the building is used by several businesses 

Turner and Sellers The Square Hessle. Still trading though no longer a Ford dealer.

Elliott  Esplanade Hornsea. No longer trading and the building long gone. I'm unsure what's on the site now as I'm not certain where on Esplanade the building was.

Crystal of Hull on Anlaby Road, Holderness Road and Hedon Road. Both the Anlaby Road and Holderness Road sites are demolished, the Anlaby Road site is now a diabetes centre. The Hedon Road site is still a commercial vehicle dealer.

Immingham Motors Stallingborough Road Immingham. No longer trading, I'm unsure what is on the site now

R&RC Bond Hallgate Pocklington. Lost the franchise around 2005,closed 2007. The site of the old showroom is now the Aldi car park and the site of the old workshops are now houses

Hartford Motors Station Road Scunthorpe. Now known as Hartwell, they are still an approved repairer though Stoneacre now have the new car sales franchise for Ford in Scunthorpe 

Winestead Garage Station Road Winestead. Long since closed though the building is still there

[sheffcortinacentre]

Brook Shaw ford of Sheffield is now a gym was took over by lookers who moved.

TCHarrison ( was RS dealers) now just a car dealers have some still in others towns , originally started in Sheffield after first world war had dealerships in Sheffield & Rotherham , large dedicated commercial dealership too.

Founder Cuthbert Harrison was a ford works driver got as far as F1 just after the war, only part left now is on northern outskirts of the town where they are now a JCB dealership.

The Ford one in Skegness still exists but the one in mablethorpe closed recently I think.

[Markeh]

Be interesting to see what some of the below were listed as back then.

Hooleys of Nottingham closed roughly around the turn of the century, and their Derby Road site is now a block of flats. The old paint shop still exists because it was a listed building, or so my dad tells me (he worked at Hooleys for the best part of 20 years)

Central Garage of Hucknall still exists as a building I believe. Last I knew it was a wedding dress shop, if I'm thinking of the right place.

Sandicliffe still exist, possibly still at their Stapleford site, but half of it now showing as closed on Google (still doing commercials and Maxus apparently) - the site they used to occupy in West Bridgford is now part flats, part Tesla after they moved to a massive new building in Lenton (currently alongside Mazda, MG, GWM and XPeng, formerly alongside Nissan and Ineos). Hucknall site closed and I think is a storage place now. Can't recall if there were any others.

What was GK Ford of Mansfield (and I don't know if it was there or under that name in 87) was on Chesterfield Road prior to being demolished for a Tesco in the mid 00s - it's now under Perrys on Southwell Road West.

In what will be a recurring theme, a number of smaller garages up and down the country seem to have lost the franchise and operated as service for a bit before going with used cars. This includes (very much not an exhaustive list)

• B Eyre and Sons, Coningsby (seems to be quite recent)
• Tuxford Road Garage, Ollerton (quite a while back)
• Warsop Motor Company, Warsop (quite recent, have taken on KGM)
• Chesil Beach Motors, Portland
• Flora Motors, Helston
• The previously mentioned Taylors, Skegness

[Eyersey1234]

5 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

Brook Shaw ford of Sheffield is now a gym was took over by lookers who moved.

TCHarrison ( was RS dealers) now just a car dealers have some still in others towns , originally started in Sheffield after first world war had dealerships in Sheffield & Rotherham , large dedicated commercial dealership too.

Founder Cuthbert Harrison was a ford works driver got as far as F1 just after the war, only part left now is on northern outskirts of the town where they are now a JCB dealership.

The Ford one in Skegness still exists but the one in mablethorpe closed recently I think.

Seacroft of Mablethorpe are still trading as far as I know, they are a service centre now. Lookers in Sheffield were previously Dixon Ford

[Eyersey1234]

6 hours ago, Markeh said:

Be interesting to see what some of the below were listed as back then.

Hooleys of Nottingham closed roughly around the turn of the century, and their Derby Road site is now a block of flats. The old paint shop still exists because it was a listed building, or so my dad tells me (he worked at Hooleys for the best part of 20 years)

Central Garage of Hucknall still exists as a building I believe. Last I knew it was a wedding dress shop, if I'm thinking of the right place.

Sandicliffe still exist, possibly still at their Stapleford site, but half of it now showing as closed on Google (still doing commercials and Maxus apparently) - the site they used to occupy in West Bridgford is now part flats, part Tesla after they moved to a massive new building in Lenton (currently alongside Mazda, MG, GWM and XPeng, formerly alongside Nissan and Ineos). Hucknall site closed and I think is a storage place now. Can't recall if there were any others.

What was GK Ford of Mansfield (and I don't know if it was there or under that name in 87) was on Chesterfield Road prior to being demolished for a Tesco in the mid 00s - it's now under Perrys on Southwell Road West.

In what will be a recurring theme, a number of smaller garages up and down the country seem to have lost the franchise and operated as service for a bit before going with used cars. This includes (very much not an exhaustive list)

• B Eyre and Sons, Coningsby (seems to be quite recent)
• Tuxford Road Garage, Ollerton (quite a while back)
• Warsop Motor Company, Warsop (quite recent, have taken on KGM)
• Chesil Beach Motors, Portland
• Flora Motors, Helston
• The previously mentioned Taylors, Skegness

Ford had a big cull of the dealer network at the end of last year, all of the retail dealers lost their new car sales franchise 

[sierraman]

9 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

Brook Shaw ford of Sheffield is now a gym was took over by lookers who moved.

TCHarrison ( was RS dealers) now just a car dealers have some still in others towns , originally started in Sheffield after first world war had dealerships in Sheffield & Rotherham , large dedicated commercial dealership too.

Founder Cuthbert Harrison was a ford works driver got as far as F1 just after the war, only part left now is on northern outskirts of the town where they are now a JCB dealership.

The Ford one in Skegness still exists but the one in mablethorpe closed recently I think.

Inability to stump up for the training/equipment for EV’s is killing the smaller outfits off. They seem to either go down being a Ford Specialist a bit like Carters of Chapeltown or end up reduced to selling obscure nonsense like Ssanyongs or some off brand Chinese make. 

[quicksilver]

4 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Inability to stump up for the training/equipment for EV’s is killing the smaller outfits off. They seem to either go down being a Ford Specialist a bit like Carters of Chapeltown or end up reduced to selling obscure nonsense like Ssanyongs or some off brand Chinese make. 

That presumably explains why my local Ford dealer (Buckingham Ford, now Buckingham Motor Company) recently became a non-franchised used car dealer after selling Fords for many years. Most of their sales were of Fiestas and Focuses so their volume sellers no longer exist, and I can't say I've seen many Ford EVs around here.

[MVX11V]

This prompted me to revisit an area i haven't been to for some time, to see if the place where my old man purchased a brand new, two tone brown, crusader off the revolving turntable in the showroom was still an thing.

And it's still going! 

 

[sheffcortinacentre]

7 hours ago, Eyersey1234 said:

Seacroft of Mablethorpe are still trading as far as I know, they are a service centre now. Lookers in Sheffield were previously Dixon Ford

They took over from brook Shaw, my dad's Corsair,MK3 & Mk5 cortinas came from there, Mk5 was only new car he ever bought ( I still own it).

Few years since I've been to mablethorpe so wasn't sure if it was still there.

[sheffcortinacentre]

2 hours ago, sierraman said:

Inability to stump up for the training/equipment for EV’s is killing the smaller outfits off. They seem to either go down being a Ford Specialist a bit like Carters of Chapeltown or end up reduced to selling obscure nonsense like Ssanyongs or some off brand Chinese make. 

My neighbour worked for carter's 20 odd years but left earlier this year ( he's now a forklift mechanic) fed up with the way modern cars have gone the last few years, just plug & play ,said your just a fitter now do what the computer says ( not what your skill/experience tells you) .

[Timewaster]

There was a time every town had a Ford dealer.

I imagine it was a factor in deciding what to buy, certainly it would have been on my dad's radar. He wouldn't buy a car if the dealer (or more importantly the parts counter) was 20 miles away.

All the ones near me are all Kia agents now. 

I haven't seen a Vauxhall dealer for years. I wouldn't know where to find one.

[Eyersey1234]

32 minutes ago, Timewaster said:

There was a time every town had a Ford dealer.

I imagine it was a factor in deciding what to buy, certainly it would have been on my dad's radar. He wouldn't buy a car if the dealer (or more importantly the parts counter) was 20 miles away.

All the ones near me are all Kia agents now. 

I haven't seen a Vauxhall dealer for years. I wouldn't know where to find one.

BL were the same, at one time pretty much every town had one. When I was a kid in the 90s there were 2 Vauxhall dealers in Hull, one at Beverley, Mappleton, Driffield, Bridlington and Goole. There's one dealer at Hull now covering the same area those 7 did

[sierraman]

4 hours ago, quicksilver said:

That presumably explains why my local Ford dealer (Buckingham Ford, now Buckingham Motor Company) recently became a non-franchised used car dealer after selling Fords for many years. Most of their sales were of Fiestas and Focuses so their volume sellers no longer exist, and I can't say I've seen many Ford EVs around here.

Loads of Explorers under company car schemes. 

[Lord Sterling]

7 hours ago, Timewaster said:

There was a time every town had a Ford dealer. 

I haven't seen a Vauxhall dealer for years. I wouldn't know where to find one.

Vauxhall dealers are closing left, right and centre. One in Dudley closed fairly recently. One in Kidderminster closed for good a few years ago, demolished and a small relief road built through it.

Fords were big dealers back in the day. In Telford, we had Furrows for Ford which started off just off the A5 to Shrewsbury before they bought a massive corner plot near Wellington and and based their dealership there. It's where Ma and Pa Sterling bought their then-new Mk3 Fiesta.

BTW* If anyone has a Mk3 Fiesta they want to lend for a week or so, please let me know as I'd love to let Ma_Sterling drive one again for nostalgic reasons which she expressed recently.  Happy to counter-lend an S-Type or a V6 Vectra.

[Timewaster]

With BL and Vauxhall/Opel mergers there was quite often two dealers in the same town.

At one point, our little town had 2 BL dealers so close that their yards backed onto each other.

Now one is a Christian church centre and the other is a car park.

Of all the dealers here, only one survives as a Kia agents. A few carried on as independent workshops and the ex Datsun/Fiat/Peugeot and finally Vauxhall one I worked in is now a co op.

[Dobloseven]

Think there used to be a two tier system of Ford dealers,with main ones and smaller "retail" ones,who presumably bought their stock from the main ones.We used to have Central Motors in Leicester,who claimed to be the oldest Ford dealer in the country,and occasionally had a Model T in the showroom.They were taken over under the Evans Halshaw banner and moved to a modern site nearby.They lost the franchise and were  a used car supermarket for a time,before closing,with the site now overgrown and graffitied.The original site is still in use with the showroom a tool and engineering supplies place and the workshops housing Parkers Parts,who have a large fleet of vans delivering to garages and their many other branches.Sandicliffe still sell Ford from a large site,that also sells Mazda and more recently BYD.Would think the vans and pick ups are Fords strong hand these days.

[sheffcortinacentre]

Afaik In the 70's Sheffield had 7 ford dealers, 3 vauxhall,4BL, 2 reno,2vw,1 each Peugeot,Citroen,Mazda,Toyota,Datsun, mitsubishi, Mercedes,lada,volvo.

[bigstraight6]

6 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

My neighbour worked for carter's 20 odd years but left earlier this year ( he's now a forklift mechanic) fed up with the way modern cars have gone the last few years, just plug & play ,said your just a fitter now do what the computer says ( not what your skill/experience tells you) .

One of my lorry driving colleagues made the move away from being a mechanic for the same reasons about 18 months ago. Ford dealer wise we have the mighty Vospers here in Plymouth, now a multi franchise operation including those hateful Omodo/Jaecoo piles of crap.

[warren t claim]

Are Dees of Croydon still Ford dealers?

[Split_Pin]

Is Peter Hastie Motors in Crail listed? They must have been the smallest Ford Dealer in the UK. Where it once stood in the High Street is now a gap in the terrace and what was and the area behind through a rather snug archway which led to 2 petrol pumps is now flats.

[sheffcortinacentre]

Lookers is also a byd place ,God help us if that's your dream car😱🤯

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, warren t claim said:

Are Dees of Croydon still Ford dealers?

I remember them

[Metal Guru]

Harrison Ford in Peebles has to be the best named dealership.

[sierraman]

7 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

Lookers is also a byd place ,God help us if that's your dream car😱🤯

It’s part of a package you seem to get when you are in your early 30’s now. A new build Persimmon home with the surface area of a postage stamp, a vegetarian diet and a new Chinese electric car. 

[Eyersey1234]

9 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Is Peter Hastie Motors in Crail listed? They must have been the smallest Ford Dealer in the UK. Where it once stood in the High Street is now a gap in the terrace and what was and the area behind through a rather snug archway which led to 2 petrol pumps is now flats.

They are indeed, the address is given as 12 Westgate, Crail. I had to look up where Crail is to be honest as I'd never heard of it

[Eyersey1234]

10 hours ago, warren t claim said:

Are Dees of Croydon still Ford dealers?

There is a Ford Service centre called Invicta now but they are on Imperial Way so not on the same site

[Split_Pin]

14 minutes ago, Eyersey1234 said:

They are indeed, the address is given as 12 Westgate, Crail. I had to look up where Crail is to be honest as I'd never heard of it

That's it! I used to go on holiday there every July during the 1980s and the single car in the showroom wore the new registration mark.

They must have sold quite a few cars as I recall most Escorts and Fiestas in the village had the dealer's name on the plates. Even when my family returned to Crail for just for the day in the mid to late 90s there were still a few cars like this knocking about.

[quicksilver]

So many garages, including some very well established ones, have closed over the last 20 years or so. In Buckingham we used to have four franchised dealers within sight of each other but now there are none.

• W.J. Cooper (Peugeot) - closed early 2000s, now flats.
• W. Ganderton (Lancia) - still in business as a service/repair garage but haven't sold cars since Lancia disappeared.
• Buckingham Motor Company, later Evans Halshaw (Vauxhall) - closed early 2000s, now a Sainsburys.
• Phillips & Sons (Rover, later Ford), later Buckingham Ford - recently became a non-franchised used car dealer.

Gandertons is potentially Britain's oldest garage, founded in 1849 as a wheelwright, and Phillips & Sons had a long history too, being listed in a 1926 directory.

Even Milton Keynes has seen a drastic reduction. The Vauxhall garage at Crownhill disappeared a few years ago, the Hyundai dealer at Old Stratford (one of the country's oldest Hyundai franchises) shut recently, and I'm sure there are a lot more.

[sierraman]

Believe it or not cars are requiring considerably less attention than they once did, exhausts lasting 3 winters, engines shagged out at 80,000, service required every 6000 miles. Plenty of work for garages then doing those follow up jobs. Plus I could be wrong but years ago people used to see the value in having the car serviced, I know of many people that never have the car serviced. 

[quicksilver]

10 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Believe it or not cars are requiring considerably less attention than they once did, exhausts lasting 3 winters, engines shagged out at 80,000, service required every 6000 miles. Plenty of work for garages then doing those follow up jobs. Plus I could be wrong but years ago people used to see the value in having the car serviced, I know of many people that never have the car serviced. 

All too true, the reliability of modern cars is killing both the sales and service sides of the business. On top of that, the rise of online marketplaces means they don't need flashy and expensive town centre showrooms and a yard on an industrial estate will do the job just as well.