1946 – 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Kreutzer family enjoys shift from horseshoes to Hondas

One of the earliest businesses on Steinbach Main Street was the blacksmith shop run by Heinrich Kreutzer. Two generations later, the Kreutzer family switched from horseshoes to horsepower as Gordon Kreutzer launched a career with J. R. Friesen and Sons in 1956.

That was early days for “The Automobile City” and the Steinbach Auto Dealers co-operative effort to make sure people would buy their vehicles at any one of the dozen or so dealerships along Main Street.

Today, Doug Kreutzer, Heinrich Kreutzer’s great-grandson, has the distinction of being just about the only remaining independent automobile dealer, while even in Steinbach, most of the dealerships have evolved into buyers’ groups.

Gordon Kreutzer still has an office at his son’s Honda dealership on Highway 12, and some of the customers who drop in these days recall buying their first vehicle from Gordon when he was at J.R.s.

Gordon Kreutzer was a star defenceman with the Steinbach Huskies in 1956 when he asked Ed Friesen, a keen supporter of Steinbach hockey teams, for a job. Kreutzer started working at J. R. Friesen’s, doing automobile cleanup, working the gas pumps, and washing floors until a new position opened up, he said.

Ford wanted the Steinbach dealership to sell parts to small repair shops in the Southeast and Gordon was given a small truck and he went about picking up stock at the Winnipeg depot and making deliveries to repair shops all over the Southeast.

After four or five years Kreutzer moved on to the sales department and continued to move up the ladder to become sales manager.

The shift from sales to ownership was quite a change for him when he bought into Harvest Honda with Bob Banman. They had a small dealership located on Main Street next to Banman’s Sales and Service.

It was almost like starting over, Gordon said. There were three employees, Bob, Gordon and manager Gil Peters. Gordon said he would sell cars, (when they had cars to sell), wash cars and sweep floors.

The Civic was a good selling car, but there was a limit to Japanese imports. The Steinbach dealer would sell a truckload of cars and then have to patiently wait for the delivery of another truckload.

Doug Kreutzer started working at Harvest Honda when he was in junior high. His career pretty much followed his dad’s. He was sweeping floors, washing cars and whatever else a kid could do at that time, he said.

After college Doug joined his father in the business, and later they bought out Bob Banman’s share.

When Banman and Kreutzer moved Harvest Honda to the old Loewen Chevrolet location on Highway 12 the building had been empty for 2 1/2 years. Honda occupied one third of the building, Case IH had the back shop and half of the front, Gordon said.

Bob and Gord bought the building together and Doug bought Bob’s share when Banman became a partner in the Fairway Ford Dealership on Main Street.

In 2002 the Kreutzers took over the entire building. After 44 years, Harvest Honda has now grown to the point where there are 40 full and part time employees.

Swapping experiences in car sales, father and son have very different tales to tell.

Buying cars used to be an event and every year the new cars arrived to show room windows covered with paper until launching day. People used to come in to test drive cars, Gordon says.

Doug says today’s customers know what they want and do their test driving on the internet.

Salesmen of old would not sit in the show room waiting for customers to come in; Gordon was on the road two days a week seeking out customers.

Today’s customers do their research on the computer and check online for dealerships that have what they want. Consumers are more educated in car buying today and no longer need ask the dealer questions about the vehicle they are interested in buying.

Gordon says when he was selling cars, customers were most interested in the wheelbase. They knew the longer the wheelbase, the better the ride.

He used to drive a Ford Estate Wagon and it would take the wheelbase of three Hondas to make one of those, Gordon chuckles.

When Japanese vehicle sales started to take off, the Canadian government put restrictions on the number of vehicles that could be imported to give North American automakers the opportunity to retool their production facilities to deal with the demand for downsized vehicles.

Honda was ahead of its time and built a plant in Canada to minimize import restrictions and manufactured the new Accord in Canada.