It seems to me most cars are very reliable today and rarely need parts. I have also found that car parts are very easy to find online which is ironic that the need for parts and the ease of parts acquisition are inversely proportional. Years ago, this same inverse dynamic was true as it seemed you always needed parts and there were not as many places to quickly get those needed items. Then the great parts equalizer appeared on pulp paper with a color cover, the JC Whitney parts catalog. .
JC Whitney started as the Warshawsky Company in 1915. Owner Israel Warshawsky founded the business in Chicago and would gather used parts from junk vehicles for resale. He later began reselling new auto parts. Warshawsky’s son, Roy, joined the business in 1934 and took out the first ad for their parts catalog in “Popular Mechanics” which began JC Whitney as many of us remember it. JC Whitney has gone through various owners however the brand still exists as an interesting online car magazine that has a link to carparts.com which purchased the original company.
At one time, catalogs were a portal to the outside world and carried the promise that life could be more interesting or easier if only you would fill out the purchase form and send some money to the seller. Gurney Seeds, Sears and Roebuck, Montgomery Wards all held a place of interest for me however the JC Whitney catalog was my teenaged-era catalog of choice.
I rarely ordered anything from the JC Whitney catalog. I would get ideas from it and then try to cheaply reproduce something similar. My first running boards for a truck were modeled after something I saw in the JC Whitney catalog, with my own slight modification. The original running boards were made of square tubing which placed the flat side up, however I designed them so the corner faced up so I could scrape my shoes off on the edge. My brother Darrel did the welding, and I later painted his work and bolted it onto my Dodge Power Wagon.
The JC Whitney catalog had everything you needed under the hood, but that stuff seemed pretty boring to me. You could purchase a complete steel Jeep body from the catalog which made me question if I could buy a junk chassis from a car and mount the Jeep body on top of it. I never tried this as I was more interested in less-expensive items such as the “giant 18” convex panoramic mirror.” This would have come in handy on the rare occasion another vehicle was sharing the road with me around Viking back in the eighties.
Most of my JC Whitney catalog explorations were really just an exploration of my own imagination. I could imagine the things we see as common today, however most of them were not available in my younger years. If they were available, I could find them in the JC Whitney catalog. I mean, how could any vehicle owner suffer along without “Winky the White Cat” which sat on the rear window ledge and had tiny bulbs for eyes that would light up in coordination with your brake lights?
Based on a search through Ebay, I am not the only one who attaches nostalgia to the JC Whitney catalog. A 1972 version. which originally sold for a dollar, now goes for $15.00. A 1959 edition, original price fifty cents, now includes an asking price of $30.00. People aren’t buying parts; they’re buying a little trip back in time. There may even be some who still hope that it isn’t too late to find a wolf whistle and a set of lake pipes for their 1967 Corvair and finally, truly be cool.
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Justine Teie Susan Lieberg Dan Wiskow Heather Morey
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