On one side of Belknap Street in Superior’s Billings Park neighborhood resides the gleaming new Kari Toyota dealership. Modern and sleek, the 24,000-square-foot building and surrounding lot houses beautiful new Toyotas, with their drive-assist capability, digital smartphone keys, voice command, full-screen navigation, heated and cooled seats and countless other luxuries. The business opened at 3223 Belknap on Aug. 17, following almost a century in the North End.
Across the street is quite the juxtaposition, a step back in time — no, a leap back in time. That’s where Jim Kari, former co-owner of the dealership and still a minority owner, and his wife Sandy created their very own shrine to Studebakers, which is what the Kari family started out selling in the late 1930s.
In fact, the first one the family sold, a 1939 Studebaker Champion, is the showpiece of Jim’s garage, which occupies a building that used to be a Union 76 gas station and, before that, a Pure gas station.
The only vehicle in this building doesn’t have heated seats or full-screen navigation, though the manual window cranks are in fine working order.
The two-door Champion, now painted fire-engine red, has 46,000 miles on it. It doesn’t currently run, but Jim hopes to change that this winter. Eventually, he’d like to return it to its original green color and put 16-inch tires back on it in place of the 15-inch tires it has now.
“This is fun stuff,” Jim said. “Just like you do in retirement, the fun stuff.”
Jim bought the building about three years ago, knowing he needed a place for the Studebaker and for his growing collection of family, dealership and automotive memorabilia. The building had fallen into disrepair, so he went to work giving it a makeover: fresh paint, new windows, new asphalt for the parking lot and plenty of other cosmetic upgrades.
“I knew I needed a place for this car, and I thought this spot would be perfect,” Jim said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
It has also become something of a conversation piece in Billings Park. With Kari Toyota’s new home across the street and more traffic flowing through the neighborhood, especially as businesses prepare for the eventual Blatnik Bridge closure, people are noticing.
“It’s constant,” Jim said. “People are always waving and honking.”
Some stop by. While Jim was talking outside the garage on a late-August morning, a gentleman in a white Mustang pulled up and asked, “Is this a working gas station?” No doubt he was intrigued by the black and white street-side sign advertising five gallons of gas for 83 cents. Worth a stop.
Jim Kari.
Jim smiled and answered: “No, it’s really just a place to store my car, an old Studebaker.”
The gentleman got out and had a look around.
That’s the whole point, and it happens often, Jim said.
“It does, all the time,” Jim said, especially when he first got started refurbishing the old building. “Eventually, I had to close the door. It’s fun when people stop in, but I wasn’t getting anything done.”
Still, he enjoys the curiosity. He enjoys the honks, the waves and the people who slow down to look. He especially enjoys hearing from neighbors who appreciate seeing the old gas station brought back to life.
“It’s kind of neat,” Jim said. “People come by and thank me for fixing this building up.”
It’s not a museum in the formal sense, but it feels like one. The front of the garage features replica Texaco gas pumps Jim made with help from Gene Rossberg, a shop teacher at Northwood Technical College. Rossberg also built the front desk inside the garage.
Out front is the sign, modeled after one from the old Kari Garage, promoting five gallons of gas for less than a buck.
Inside, the Studebaker sits surrounded by reminders of another era. There are old signs, photos, dealership keepsakes and automotive odds and ends. Tires in one corner are from an old Model T. In back, behind the front desk, Jim turned what used to be a bathroom into what he calls his “little library,” filled with more pieces of history. Also behind the front desk is a shelf that doubles as a hidden door to a small space at the rear of the building. Because why not.
“I’m always looking for new stuff to add,” he said.
The garage also helps tell the story of the business now known as Kari Toyota.
Before Toyota, before the new building on Belknap Street, before decades on Tower Avenue, there was Kari Garage. The family business began in 1933, and by 1939, Henry, Ray and Edwin Kari were selling Studebakers in Superior — the 1939 Champion in Jim’s garage a harbinger of things to come.
Jim’s father had gone to trade school in Michigan, where Henry Ford tried to recruit him. But he wanted to come home to Superior and open his own garage.
Kari Garage sold Studebakers from 1939 to 1966. In 1947, the family completed the building at 1002 Ogden Ave. as a Studebaker dealership, marking the occasion with a grand opening and 1947 Studebakers in the showroom. Studebaker ended truck production in 1964, and Kari Garage became an International Harvester light-duty truck dealer in 1965.
Then came 1966.
Among the memorabilia Jim keeps on the walls of his garage is a Western Union telegram sent in March of that year from E.J. Challinor, president of Studebaker Automotive Sales Corp. Its message was blunt: “Because of heavy and irreversible losses being incurred by automotive division, automobile production and distribution to be permanently discontinued. Letter to follow promptly concerning financial assistance. Sincerely regret necessity to cease operations. But loss position permits no other course of action.”
The Studebaker company, whose roots dated to 1852 producing other equipment such as wheelbarrows, was done making automobiles or anything after 114 years in business..
But there was a lifeline on the horizon. A foreign automotive maker, and one from Japan no less, that was starting to turn heads on the West Coast.
“What was coming next was Toyota,” Jim said.
In 1968, Kari Garage became a Toyota dealer, beginning the chapter that continues today across the street from Jim’s Studebaker shrine. Chris Kari, Jim’s nephew and the fourth-generation owner, now leads Kari Toyota. He and his wife, Amy, purchased the nine-acre Billings Park site for the dealership a few years ago, and the new facility opened this summer.
The timing makes the Studebaker garage feel even more fitting. On one side of the street is the future of the family business. On the other is where the story began.
Jim’s garage is also personal. The 1939 Studebaker was his first car. He began driving it in 1960.
“Very first car of mine, a Studebaker,” he said matter of factly.
He laughs about the building’s signage, too. At one point, because of how “Studebaker” looked on the building, some people thought it said “Stude-bakery” and wondered if a bakery was opening.
No pastries are planned. Just memories, memorabilia and one very meaningful car.
Jim said he prefers driving newer vehicles now because he no longer likes working on them as much as he once did. But the old Studebaker still has a hold on him. It represents his family’s work, Superior’s automotive history and the origins of a business that has lasted more than nine decades.
The new Kari Toyota dealership may have all the modern comforts, but Jim’s garage has something else – the feel of a place where time slowed down just enough to let the past catch up with the present.
“It’s been a labor of love,” Jim said. “It’s fun to show all this stuff off.”
