Collector car dealership Motorcar Portfolio moves

Collector car dealership Motorcar Portfolio is moving on up from the basement digs it occupied in Canton, Ohio, for its first 16 years to a street-level showroom. Now Bob Lichty finally has a window office, and it’s just four blocks from the business’s original location.

“At the old location, we were in the lower level of a hotel that was original built as a Hilton, then a Mariott, and when they chose to sell the hotel, the new buyers didn’t want a car dealer in the basement and we were invited to leave, so here we are in a new spot,” said Lichty, president of Motorcar Portfolio.

Motorcar Portfolio’s move was effective May 1st, and the new location couldn’t be more perfect for a collector car dealership. The building that the business now occupies was originally a Chevrolet dealership, and now it’s a dealership again.

“It was a Chevrolet dealership that was built in 1947 and later remodeled in the early 1960s,” Lichty said. “It has kind of a mid-century modern look to it and that is neat because it’s a hot era of cars right now.”

Eppy Chevrolet, the dealership that originally occupied the building that Motorcar Portfolio now calls home, closed in the early 1990s. It eventually became home to offices, which the Motorcar Portfolio staff had to disassemble in order to accommodate their inventory of 40 or so collector vehicles. It only took a couple days to move into the new location at 730 Market Avenue South, Lichty said. Motorcar Portfolio’s current home is just four blocks down Market Avenue from its original place of business at 320 Market Avenue South.

“The first car we moved in here was the 1972 Impala Custom and boy, did it look at home in the showroom,” Lichty said.

Other vehicles currently in Motorcar Portfolio’s inventory include a 1950 Buick Roadmaster woodie station wagon, a 1954 Packard Caribbean convertible and a 1950 Willys station wagon.

With a street-level showroom sporting 50 linear feet of windows, Lichty expects more visibility to these and the dealer’s other offerings.

“We’re directly across the street from a brand new Veterans Administration clinic that’s clearly full of guys the right age to like cars,” he said. “They are already coming across the street to peek in the windows. They are 55-75 years old and if they are not looking to buy an old car, hopefully they are looking to sell one. They seem like our kind of guys.”