Ed Grisamore: It has been a good ride for legendary car salesman

WARNER ROBINS -- Give Jim Clance 30 seconds and he could usually sell you a car.

OK. Maybe a minute. Or even 90 seconds to wheel and deal.

Bucket seats. Power steering. Cruise control. Mint condition.

If he wanted some premium ticks to make his sales pitch, a 30-second commercial during tonight's Super Bowl would set him back a cool $5 million.

But let it be known Clance sold automobiles for as a long as the Super Bowl has been around -- 50 years -- and never spent a Roosevelt dime on television advertising.

No pounding on hoods or dressing up in a chicken outfit. No strutting or shouting. No slick slogans or sticker-price gimmicks.

Word of mouth brought folks to his car lots in Macon and Warner Robins. A handshake would seal the deal and send them riding off in Buick Skylarks and Ford Fairlanes.

He estimates he sold more than 15,000 cars in his half-century in the business. He is 87 years old now, his body slowed by age, but he still talks about cars with the same passion of that young man who sold his first automobile 70 years ago on the odometer.

It would embellish the story had he been born in the back seat of a Chevy on the next-to-last day of December in 1928. Only that didn't happen. However, his parents were in the middle of a 150-mile round trip when the oldest of their three sons came into the world.

His father, Carrol Clance, was headed to a plumbing job in Columbus when his very pregnant wife, Eunice, decided to ride with him. Baby James Clance made an unscheduled arrival while they were in Columbus. They returned to Macon the next day.

Clance graduated from Lanier High School in 1948. Early the next morning, his father roused him from bed at their home on Colquitt Street.

"Get up, boy, it's time to go to work," he said.

He took him to a plumbing job in Thomaston. Clance wasn't so sure he wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps. He would rather his hands be wrapped around a steering wheel than a galvanized steel pipe.

He proved he was a born car salesman when he bought his first vehicle. He and two of his high school buddies, Emory Greene and Bubba Wood, were driving through the countryside in Crawford County on a Sunday afternoon when they spotted an old Model T in the middle of a field.

"Weeds were growing up through the floorboard, but I wanted that car," he said. "The next day, Bubba loaned me his car, and I drove back out there. I saw a fellow plowing with a mule, so I stopped. He told me where to find the owner."

Clance knocked on the man's door and asked if he would be willing to sell the abandoned car. It was a 1928 model, the year Clance was born.

"Young man, that car ain't worth nothing," the man told him. "It's worn out and hasn't run in a long time. Anything I charged you would be too much."

Clance offered him $10. Sold. He came back the next day with some chains and towed it to the Standard Oil service station at the corner of Houston Avenue and Charles Street.

He put in four new spark plugs for 65 cents, changed the oil and filled it up with gas. His friends gave him a push, and the motor rumbled to life.

He took it out for a short spin and came back.

"My buddies all wanted to ride, and I told them to get on," Clance said. "Back in those days, you didn't say get in. You said get on."

A short time later, a man asked Clance if he would be willing to sell it. Clance said he would consider selling it for $125. When the man offered him $100, Clance had sold his first car.

It would be his first of many.

After a three-year stint in the Army during the Korean War -- he served as a director of military transportation while stationed in Germany -- he returned to Macon. He began working at Park Plymouth in Macon in 1959, where he was recognized as one of the nation's top Chrysler salesmen.

Even after he and his brother, Gene, borrowed $400 from their mother and opened a men's clothing store on Houston Avenue, he still kept a few cars for sale parked in front of the store.

He opened his own car lot on Pine Street in 1963 with $17 in the bank and 17 cars on the premises. He later managed Huck's Cars in Warner Robins, which was owned by the Huckabee automotive family from Macon. He went back into business for himself at 1206 Watson Blvd.

He once sold a car to former Macon Mayor "Machine Gun" Ronnie Thompson. Over the years, he worked with such legendary car dealers as Okie Harrison, Chester Chapman and Barney A. Smith. During his career, he also served as president of the Warner Robins Chamber of Commerce.

If you lined up all the cars he has sold from end to end, it would stretch from the main gate at Robins Air Force Base to the corner of Vineville and Pio Nono avenues in Macon and back to RAFB.

He has said, on many occasions, nobody ever accused him of selling them a lemon. He wasn't in the business of lemons, only lemonade.

And he never needed to spend $5 million on a Super Bowl ad, either.

"Some of the best people I have ever known buy and sell cars," he said. "They're honest people, the kind who go to church on Sunday."

Yes, it has been a good ride.

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism and creative writing at Stratford Academy in Macon. He can be reached at edgrisamore@gmail.com.

This story was originally published February 6, 2016 at 7:52 PM with the headline "Ed Grisamore: It has been a good ride for legendary car salesman ."