A curvilinear downtown body shop has a high-class history

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

Hiten Adhvaryu didn’t realize he was becoming part of history when he leased the old Horn’s body shop location from the Horns a year ago—but he knew he liked 1427 Long Beach Blvd.’s avant garde looks (curvy walls, shark fin sign, round showroom) and its cavernous space.

“It was one of the reasons I was attracted to this shop, was the potential,” says Adhvaryu, 29, who previously ran a body shop in Westminster. “This shop used to do 200 cars a month.”

Used to—but when Adhvaryu took over the 22,000-square-foot shop in March of last year and changed the name to Quality Assured Collision Center, Inc., he says its output had shrunk to around 50 cars a month.

That’s far from its glory days, as Adhvaryu learned when he visited City Hall to get his business license—a process he says took six months. “Nineteen-forty-two—I have the plans right here,” he says, brandishing a sheaf of rolled-up blueprints he pulled to redo electrical and plumbing lines after assuming control.

Yes, 1942. It was a good year for Long Beach business‚ thanks to the Naval Shipyard and the camouflaged Douglas aircraft plant out on Lakewood Boulevard—and probably still a decent one for car dealerships. (People had money to spend, even if there were no new cars to buy.) And it’s the year this building was built, at a time when Long Beach Boulevard was New Car Dealership Central. You want names? Try Art Hall Inc., which sold Lincolns and Mercurys out of 1633 American Ave.—what they used to call Long Beach Boulevard. Your downtown Chevrolet Dealer, according to the 1948 phone book, was Geo. E. Hoover, at 601 American Ave. Long Beach automobilist Glenn E. Thomas was selling up a storm; he’d eventually wind up at addresses on Anaheim Street just east of Long Beach Boulevard.

And, by 1948, Adhvaryu’s building was the Packard Long Beach Co., run by L.V. “Duke” Hatton (wife Gertrude); and Ellis J. Arkush Jr. (wife Alma L.). (The 1948 telephone book on microfilm even gives their home addresses. Hatton lived in the Virginia Country Club area, and by the early 1950s, so did Arkush.)

Adhvaryu’s building has very likely always been in the car business—and by the late 1940s it was part of a Packard exacta which included the former Auto Museum a block away at Locust Avenue and Anaheim Street. Two Packard dealers? What’s a Packard? Packards are orphans now—like the Pierce-Arrow, the Willys-Knight, the Amphicar and the Aerocar—but at the time they were at least the equivalent of a Cadillac. Thanks to industry consolidation and a looming recession, the company hung it up in 1958.

In 1966, less than 10 years later, 1427 Long Beach Blvd. was cryptically listed in the telephone book as W.T. Sublett Used Cars. The address sold Cadillacs in the 1960s and 1970s, before the Horns bought it around 1989, Adhvaryu says. And now it’s his—except the northern extremities, which he sublets.

Turning out 200 cars a month is still the goal—one he and his 11 employees are halfway toward meeting. Finding those 100 other cars? Many will come from former customers, he says; most from networking and referrals (I met Adhvaryu at the most recent Beer & Politics event)—and a few from walk-in trade. Fortunately, the manager says, his shop is easy to find, with its vernacular architecture—big, bold elements once clad in neon and designed to grab a motorist’s eye, then drag him 50 feet.

“That’s one thing I love about this building is its looks,” Adhvaryu says. “When people are trying to find it, I always tell them, look for the weirdest-looking building on the street, with the shark fin on top. I love it.”

QUALITY ASSURED COLLISION CENTER, INC. 1427 LONG BEACH BLVD | STE A | LONG BEACH 90813 | 562.599.0766

Tags: architecture, Long Beach, packard motors, quality assured collision center, Shelter