Sears might be going belly up

[2jakes]

I reckon my Sears BB gun warranty is moot at this point....

 

[tonyb]

I never fretted much about a dead battery or a shot starter in my old VWs, seeing how I could compression start 'em all by myself. Just turn on the ignition switch, trot alongside the car with the driver's door open, jump in, depress clutch pedal, shift into second, let foot of clutch and putt-putt-putt you go.

 

[2jakes]

I miss my Frankenstein beetle.

'50s body, '57 fenders, with a ’63 chassis but that engine
would start in all kinds of weather.

 

[belfastboy]

Modern engines are great. Modern bodies, at least here in salt country, are crap. I've had to junk three cars in the last fifteen years, all of which had engines that ran flawlessly well over 175,000 and had bodies that had the physical integrity of a stale graham cracker.

As for VWs, I'll never forget the best thing about mine -- whenever I skidded off the road in the slush, I could always push it out of the ditch by myself.

Yep, did that a few times. And I loved that I could jump start it even on flat ground.

 

[belfastboy]

I never fretted much about a dead battery or a shot starter in my old VWs, seeing how I could compression start 'em all by myself. Just turn on the ignition switch, trot alongside the car with the driver's door open, jump in, depress clutch pedal, shift into second, let foot of clutch and putt-putt-putt you go.

Yep, did that so many times. I had a '69 VW van with a rusted starter. Depending on where the starter motor stopped it often would not turn over so I would crawl underneath and short out the coil with needle nose plyers to spin the coil. Most of the time that worked but if not a jump start was the plan B. I ran it like for that for 2 years and to this day cannot fathom why I did not just change out the starter. But I just became used to the routine and I am a man of habit.....good and not so....

 

[belfastboy]

I miss my Frankenstein beetle.
View attachment 140558
'50 body, '57 fenders, with a ’63 chassis but that engine
would start in all kinds of weather.

I had a '65 Beetle that same colour

 

[2jakes]

I had a '65 Beetle that same colour

I used "Ford's dawn grey" to match the
Beetle's original colour. Perfect!

 

[David Conwill]

Modern engines will happily go 250,000 miles or more, but I've yet to encounter a late model vehicle where the body, interior, and electrical components are made to the same standard. But I guess people living in the Southwest are happy.

 

[BobHufford]

Yep, did that so many times. I had a '69 VW van with a rusted starter. Depending on where the starter motor stopped it often would not turn over so I would crawl underneath and short out the coil with needle nose plyers to spin the coil. Most of the time that worked but if not a jump start was the plan B. I ran it like for that for 2 years and to this day cannot fathom why I did not just change out the starter. But I just became used to the routine and I am a man of habit.....good and not so....

Haha ... I did the same thing for months with a '73 Bus. I used a wood handled claw hammer. The claws were perfect for shorting across the terminals. I did this while lying on the ground in slush at a times. I finally decided to spend the money for a new solenoid after doing this with the Bus in gear and nearly driving over myself. I did not purchase the parts at Sears though. I hope that didn't contribute to their demise...

 

[tonyb]

... I ran it like for that for 2 years and to this day cannot fathom why I did not just change out the starter. But I just became used to the routine and I am a man of habit.....good and not so....

Ain’t that the truth! It’s like “The Lottery,” the Shirley Jackson story. We do things certain ways because we do things certain ways, and have ourselves believing it is somehow the natural order.

 

[3fingers]

I did not purchase the parts at Sears though. I hope that didn't contribute to their demise...

View attachment 140587

They probably stood the loss of that sale OK. I remember when you could order auto parts out of the catalog. They not only sold stock replacements, but also speed equipment probably into the 1980s. Truly the Amazon of their time. Too bad they shot it all up against the wall.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sears was still selling off-the-shelf parts for Model T and Model A Fords well into the 70s. I used to read the catalog on rainy days, drawing moustaches on all the faces, and was fascinated by the old, obsolete stuff they were still selling.

 

[Fading Fast]

Sears was still selling off-the-shelf parts for Model T and Model A Fords well into the 70s. I used to read the catalog on rainy days, drawing moustaches on all the faces, and was fascinated by the old, obsolete stuff they were still selling.

That's a I-wouldn't-have-guessed-that fact. I would guess, at that point, two things were driving it. One, there was already a reasonably sized hobbyist market for those cars and, two, Sears was probably already in decline, in part, because it was being held hostage to its past and couldn't / wouldn't make the hard management decisions to close departments / areas that had been part of the business for along time.

If you think all business people are cold, hard, selfish, etc., - then you can snicker at what follows, but having worked for shrinking and failing businesses, I've seen managers and owners agonize over hard decisions to close departments and let employees go and I've seen them go to great lengths and spend precious capital not to. I've seen the reverse - I'm not arguing its all good or bad in the management suite - my experience is it's both.

But as noted, maybe the Model T and A business was profitable based on the hobbyists (or were there enough of them still actively on the road somewhere in the country to have it make sense), but my guess is it was probably just one of many hard decisions Sears didn't make soon enough to survive.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I can remember a few Model A's still in use as daily drivers in the years of my childhood -- mostly as trucks/woods or traphaulers/utility vehicles of one type or another, but still as working vehicles and not as collector cars. So there probably was at least some market for the stuff among farmers, loggers, fishermen, and people like that.

But I suspect more of it was just dead inventory -- somewhere there had to be a Sears warehouse full of unsold hard goods dating back decades. They had had a longstanding policy for appliances, farm equipment, and sporting goods that they kept service parts available long after the original item had disappeared from the catalogue, so if you were still using an old Water-Witch washing machine in the 70s, you could make a phone call to Sears and order new wringer rollers for it, right along side your new Bicentennial-themed flare-leg pantsuit. Carrying that deep an inventory had to have cost them more money than it brought it, but it was "the Sears Way" for a very long time.

 

[2jakes]

Something Amazon hasn’t done yet that I know of.

Ricard Nixon Birthplace House Entrance, Yorba Linda, California.
His father built this small house from a Sears kit model.
It was a modest home where he grew up and learned to play several instruments, such as piano, saxophone, flute and maybe more.
He loved music and thought of having music in his future.
He chose politics and the rest is history.

 

[Fading Fast]

Something Amazon hasn’t done yet that I know of.
View attachment 140809
View attachment 140810
Ricard Nixon Birthplace House Entrance, Yorba Linda, California.
His father built this small house from a Sears kit model.
It was a modest home where he grew up and learned to play several instruments, such as piano, saxophone, flute and maybe more.
He loved music and thought of having music in his future.
He chose politics and the rest is history.

It's funny that, today, many of the homes in TV shows (sitcoms, dramas) are riffs on the Sears Craftsman homes. Once you are aware of it, you can't help noticing how many TV families have that type of home. My guess, it must be testing well as appealing to some demographic (probably, the only demographic advertisers care about, the 18-34 year old one).

 

[3fingers]

There were entire towns or additions to towns built by companies using Sears houses to house workers. The closest one to me is Carlinville, Illinois. The Standard addition was built to house mine employees. A bit over 150 houses remain. Dupont and other companies did the same thing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Buster Keaton, of course, had his way with the whole "mail order house" concept in "One Week."

 

[Touchofevil]

I never fretted much about a dead battery or a shot starter in my old VWs, seeing how I could compression start 'em all by myself. Just turn on the ignition switch, trot alongside the car with the driver's door open, jump in, depress clutch pedal, shift into second, let foot of clutch and putt-putt-putt you go.

I remember doing that quite a bit with my buddies’ VWs. They were decently popular cars during my high school days as they were cheap and easy to work on. A lot more room than people would think as well.

 

[Touchofevil]

Buster Keaton, of course, had his way with the whole "mail order house" concept in "One Week."

I am showing that tomorrow in one of my classes.