Spotted on the cover of JC Whitney

[Jack the Knife]

To save everyone the trouble, I bought the catalog to see what great and terrible accessories might have been available. Chrome wheel arches, anyone?

[MikeSimon]

Anybody know what ever happened to JC Whitney? I lost track.

[49er]

In the early 60's JC Whitney was my go to place for Model A Ford parts. i used them up into the mid 70's for parts for my other cars (even the SL )

John

[Jack the Knife]

Anybody know what ever happened to JC Whitney? I lost track.

Acquired by a PE firm in 2002, and sold several times thereafter. Now they are part of CarParts.com. But before then, they started getting very cheap and crappy in the '90s with awful Chinese-made junk. Like many American companies. After filing for Chapter 11 in 1979, it was just downhill. Their old building on Archer Avenue in Chicago is now a mundane 5-over-1 apartment building.

[lurtch]

Hello All,

I have an interesting personal anecdote regarding JC Whitney. I also suspect  they were in business a long time before the sixties arrived.

I started messing around with cars about 1963 or 1964 as High School-er. Being a tinkerer, of course, I acquired numerous issues of their large and varied catalog. (No money to spend
means you gotta have really cheap parts and accessories if you are going to personalize a car on a puny allowance)

My Mom was born and raised in Chicago, so as kids we went there on vacations from California.
On the summer trip in 1964 I asked my Uncle Thom about JCWhitney, and he said "Hey, let's pile into my '56 Bel-Air and I'll take you to Downtown Chicago where the main store is".

We arrived and I was immediately confused because  the store we walked into was  plainly called
"Wachowski's Auto Parts".  I think the nugget of wisdom here is that an obviously Polish name
 like that might not be such a good marketing tool outside of the Chicago area?

Regrettably, the concept of racial bias was way outside of anything I had yet  come into contact with as a sheltered west coast teenager.

Any of you big business moguls want to weigh in on this?

Regards,

Larry in CA

[ja17]

I remember in the early 70's, that I could get original Mahle Pistons, original Bosch igniton parts, starters, regulators, alternators, original Glyco bearings and lots of other good original parts from them, really inexpensive. I used to get all the original parts to do a major rebuild for around $300. They even offered "crankshaft kits" which included a reconditioned crankshaft (exchange) with all the fitted OEM bearings.

[mdsalemi]

Larry,

For most of their existence as a catalog mail order auto parts supplier, they operated TWO distinct catalogs and operations: J.C. Whitney and Warshawsky.

I could be wrong, but I seem to think in the 1970s, Warshawsky sold more real car parts and Whitney lots of accessories. We mostly bought from Warshawsky for our cars.

BTW he (Israel and later his son Ray Warshawsky) were Lithuanian…