1946 – 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Steinbach car dealers earned “Automobile City” nickname

Steinbach spent decades earning its reputation as the “Automobile City”, and along the way, left the impression that no matter how else they earned a living, everyone in Steinbach sold cars. That may have been pretty close to the truth during the years of post-war boom which carried on into the 1960’s.

The Steinbach Automobile Association was launched in the 1950s, when A.D. Penner convinced his competitors that it didn’t matter which dealer made the sale, as long as the sales were made in the “Automobile City” rather than the big city to the northwest.

By joining in a major all-dealers-in sales promotion in 1960, Steinbach showed that where vehicle sales were concerned, Winnipeg car buyers would find it was “worth the trip” to do their vehicle shopping in Steinbach.

That tradition continues, although today most dealers everywhere are part of larger buyers’ groups.

An exception is at Harvest Honda in Steinbach, where the current owner is one of the few remaining independent Honda dealers in the country.

The father-son combination of Gordon and Doug Kreutzer go back a long way, with Gordon remembering his beginnings in the auto trade, back in 1956.

While back then there weren’t too many people in town whose livelihood wasn’t tied up in some way with the automobile industry, it wasn’t always that way.

Many of the men who ran car dealerships in town used to do something quite different to earn a living.

When The Carillon News introduced its Main Street auto dealers, during the first organized “Automobile Extravaganza” promotion in 1960, it was indeed a varied background for these pioneers of Steinbach’s auto industry.

There was Ed Friesen, whose father started it all, when J.R. Friesen and Son switched from carriages to motor vehicles in 1913, raising the ire of many in the religious community of Steinbach, where luxuries like cars were frowned upon. In the end, practicality gave way to progress as cars replaced the horse and buggy as the chosen mode of transportation. At the same time, tractors that some of these car dealers sold, replaced the horse for fieldwork on the farm.

Ed Friesen continued to quietly go about the business of building up a prosperous business with its own parts truck, driven by Gordon Kreutzer, travelling the country to supply parts for rural garage mechanics.

The more flamboyant Penner brothers, John D. and Abe D., made their mark with flashy dealerships and outrageous promotions.

There was John D. Penner, who split a partnership with his brother, to build a dealership that was “The Brightest Spot in Town” and who staged an annual used car auction to empty the lot, and established the Penner Tire and Rubber Company across the street.

Abe D. Penner, the other half of the dynamic Penner duo, went from politics to auto sales, and back again, as chair of the village committee in 1946 and then a member of Steinbach’s first town council in 1947. Years later, he became Steinbach mayor, replacing another auto dealer who had also made a name for himself in politics.

The man who was born with a persuasive tongue as Leonard A. Barkman, was almost sure to wind up convincing people to buy things or elect him to public office. That put him into the category of salesman, auctioneer or politician, and “ L.A.” was all three.

The two auto dealers, “A.D. and L.A.”, were indeed friendly competitors and both were still smiling after L.A. defeated A.D. in the 1958 election to replace the town’s first mayor, who was retiring.

And while L.A, and the Penners were most often in the public spotlight, all Steinbach’s earliest auto dealers can be described as men who “did other things.”

Ben Loewen, the manager of Loewen Chev-Olds, was one of the town’s fire chiefs, who made the Automobile City’s fire department one that was just as up-to-date as the town itself.

Harry Neufeld’s “Buy of the Week” at Neufeld Farm Equipment may have been for the latest Allis Chalmers tractor, but the real deal on his lot was the Nash Rambler, which he claimed to be a favorite of the thrifty motoring public. Its convertible bed-seats saved a great deal of money on hotels during those summer trips to visit relatives in Kansas, he said.

And then there was John Broesky, who not only would sell you a car, but was a master mechanic, who said he could fix your Studebaker, in the unlikely event anything went wrong. Broesky would tell potential customers that a mechanic was best qualified to know just what he was selling and that was why he chose Studebaker for his dealership.

Having spent most of his life in Europe, Dietrich Hildebrand knew the strong points of the compact car, and when the opportunity to buy his own garage came along, he chose the Renault, a small French car for his dealership.

And just across Highway 12 to the south was another dealer who brought a small European import to the Automobile City. When there was no open hunting season anywhere, Jac Banman could be found selling Volkswagens at the Esso station he opened at the corner of Highway 12 and Main Street.

The best-dressed car dealer in Steinbach probably still made his own clothes. Simon Rieger turned out many a suit of clothes, as a tailor, in the days before he married a garage owner’s daughter. He decided that he could fit people out with a brand new Pontiac at the family’s other business just as well as he could with a new suit and had been doing that at J. E. Regehr and Sons ever since.

No doubt by the time first-time visitors to Steinbach during the 1960 “Automobile Extravaganza” finished travelling up and down Main Street, they certainly did wonder if there was anyone in Steinbach who didn’t sell cars.