MICHIGAN GRAND RAPIDS Berger Chevrolet (1925)

Story by D. S. Brown.

Berger Chevrolet is well known in musclecar circles for creating wild dealership conversion cars out of the already potent Camaros of the 1960s. When GM announced the end of the Camaro, Berger revived their supercar concept to send the Camaro out with a bang. Now with the new Camaro channeling the old 1969 model, it was only natural for Berger to work some magic on it, too.

Well before capitalizing on the musclecar craze, the Berger dealership had a solid 40 year history of recognizing trends and acting at the right time. William H. Berger, a farmer in Jenison, Michigan at a time when farming was becoming problematic switched to car sales in 1925. He became a top Chevrolet salesman in a Grand Rapids, Michigan Chevrolet dealer. After a promotion to sales manager, he opened his own Chevrolet dealership near auspiciously named Wealthy and Diamond streets in southeast Grand Rapids.

Despite slow business in 1931 depression times, Berger relocated to a bigger building at 1451 Lake Drive SE. Business picked up as people bought cars prior to the war, before factories switched to exclusive military production. World War II shut down car production. Berger stayed afloat by selling appliances and trailers. People bought trailers solely for the tires which were otherwise unavailable due to war conservation measures. The dealership survived on ingenuity until auto production resumed in 1946.

New car sales boomed due to War shortage backlogs. Sales of the 1955 Chevy were strong. Berger ran with this surge and opened a second used car lot at 1564 S. Division Ave. In 1965 William Berger bought land on 28th Street to build a lot large enough to accommodate his anticipated inventory. The new location at 2525 28th St SE opened January, 1966. By March, Berger was the largest volume seller of Chevrolet in Western Michigan. His staff had been at 39 at the end of the 1950s, increasing only to 40 in 1965. The bold new move increased his employees to 75.

In 1968 Berger once again responded with a big investment when the potential in the musclecar market appeared. Berger opened a high performance parts department which made them known far and wide to every musclecar fan in the USA and even from other countries. Catering to this new market ensured the immortality of the name Berger in the ranks of musclecar fanatics.

Going beyond just stocking high performance parts, Berger actually created complete supercars. Berger thus joined the elite group of dealers who gained legendary status such as Baldwin-Motion, Yenko, NIckey and Dana. Instead of buying the parts to hop up your car, or buying a musclecar with merely great performance, now you could walk onto a dealership and buy a monster supercar right off the lot with INSANE performance, ready to blow away anything.  

William Berger died in 1972 at age 86. Dale Berger, Sr. had been active in the business since the 1950s. Dale was a car guy with an entire building on the dealership premises devoted to his car collection. He retired financially from Berger in 1977. In 1979 as the business continued to grow, 3.2 acres were added to the facility for another used car lot. The gas crunch and high interest rates in the 1980s froze sales. Berger was forced to focus on used cars. Matthew Berger took over as Sales Manager when Dale had a heart attack in 1981. He followed the new developments in the business until his death in 1990.

Low interest rates got the new cars moving again, but the success of the used car segment justified a doubling in size of the used car lot in 1990. In 1991 Berger was in 11th position for sales out of 4,400 Chevrolet dealers. Several expansions occurred in the 1990s and by 2000 the dealership had 150 employees. The collision body shop and repair facilities were brought up to cutting edge levels. Berger is still a family business and has survived the dealership chopping that hit GM.