Pioneer Garage, circa 2005
In the comments on a previous post in the Lost AMC Dealership series (a church, a fast food joint and a Jeep dealership ), Ed Niekrasz mentioned that his uncle and father ran a Jeep dealership - Pioneer Garage in Peabody, Massachusetts - and that he had some pictures of the dealership going back to the turn of the century. We told Ed we were interested in learning more, and he sent along the following photos and captions:
My Dad is one of the dealers heading to Toledo to learn about the new Jeeps and drive one home.
My Dad’s business card
Exterior of Pioneer Garage, in the early 1950s
Interior of Pioneer Garage with the new 1952(?) Aero Willys car in foreground
Dole & Osgood Wagon Works, in the early 1900s. The area behind the wagon became the showroom for Pioneer Garage.
The upper stories were removed about 1956, and a new facade added. Still Willys-Overland.
My Dad died in 1959, and my uncle and cousin, Philip Chmiel, ran the business ever since.
Pioneer Garage was always Jeeps through all of the Kaiser, AMC, Renault, etc, etc changes. I think the building color was changed from the original white to the tan during the AMC or Renault era. Note the classic Jeeps in the showroom. Phil kept repairing and dealing in classic Jeeps after  Chrysler pulled his new car franchise; the old building and facilities didn’t meet their standards.
The garage still stands today at 11 Washington St., and still revolves around Jeeps. However, Phil Chmiel sold the building a couple years back to Phil Clement, now a 31-year employee of the garage. Phil Chmiel shut down Pioneer Garage, so Phil Clement restarted the business as The Pioneer Garage. According to Clement, John Niekrasz and his brother actually started the garage in 1945, and it continued as a dealership through to 1989 or 1990, “when Lee Iacocca believed he needed big dealerships, not the mom and pop ones like Pioneer,” Clement said.
Clement said he still deals with all years of Jeep, whether restoring them, maintaining them or selling Jeep parts over the Internet at JeepAgain.com. Indeed, in the satellite photo on Google Maps, you can see a whole bunch of (what we assume to be) Jeeps out behind the building.
Thanks, Phil and Ed!
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