Category: default || By jt3y

	Click to listen to a 1969 commercial for Eger Motors

Car buffs are going nuts over the new Ford Mustang and especially the hopped-up Shelby GT edition, which is being billed as the "most powerful Mustang ever made."

At the same time, work is continuing to transform the former Zayre and Ames discount store in Olympia Shopping Center into the new home of Tri-Star Ford.

So, it seems only appropriate that I share a little piece of history from the (half) vast Tube City Omnimedia archives.

Tri-Star bought the Ford agency in McKeesport from Pro Bowl Ford, who bought it from Babe Charapp, who got into the auto business in the city after buying Paul Jones Dodge.

While Charapp was running the Dodge agency, Fords were being sold by Eger Motors, located on Walnut Street at Seventh Avenue, in the building that now houses Pozzuto & Sons Plumbing.

That same building, incidentally, was originally a vaudeville theater --- the Hippodrome --- owned by John P. Harris, who in 1927 erected the Memorial Theater on Fifth Avenue. Harris, of course, also opened the world's first theater devoted solely to motion pictures, the Nickelodeon, in Pittsburgh. (But that's another story for another time.)

When the Egers bought the old Hippodrome building sometime before 1960, it was extensively remodeled. Oh, and about the "red coats" --- the gimmick at Eger Motors was that the salesmen wore matching red sportcoats.

Go around to the back of the Pozzuto building and you can still just barely make out a billboard-size painting that depicts one of the salesmen with the legend, "HOME OF THE RED COATS."

I don't think Eger Motors ever sold as many high-performance cars as some dealers, like Yenko Chevrolet down in Canonsburg, but they definitely handled some powerful machines. This forum for Shelby Cobra enthusiasts indicates that Eger Motors was allocated at least two of the Ford-powered, British-built sports cars in 1965-66.

Shelby Cobras sold for more than $7,000 then --- no small chunk of change --- and only five dealers in Pennsylvania even carried them. Town & Country Ford in Pittsburgh was allocated one. Eger Motors got two, which should tell you something about the kind of money that was flowing in the Mon-Yough area when the steel industry was running full bore.

This commercial, which aired on WIXZ (1360) in 1969, is advertising the 1969 Shelby GT, a special edition of the Ford Mustang which (like the modern version) was tuned and hopped up under the supervision of legendary race-car mechanic and driver Carroll Shelby.

I don't know how many Shelby Mustangs that Eger sold in 1969, but they sold at least one in 1970 --- it turned up on eBay last month at a starting price of $64,100.

As the jingle in this commercial says, the redcoats saved you greenbacks ... but you'd have to save a lot of "greenbacks" to buy a 1969 Shelby Mustang today!