Roll Model: Cowtown’s Cadillac King

kent badgeHe was born in 1895, before the automobile age, when the Cadillac tailfin was still just a gleam in the eye of two-year-old Harley Earl. But a review of his life is a review of America’s love affair with the automobile in the twentieth century.

kent 1910 emf 30Frank Diffenbacher Kent was born in Clinton, Missouri. As a youth he fell in love with automobiles in 1910 when his father, Edwin C. Kent, bought an EMF 30 (“30” as in thirty horsepower).

kent yearbook 2Frank’s father, a tailor and clothing merchant, placed this ad in the 1911 Clinton High School yearbook when Frank was a sophomore.

kent yearbook 1In the yearbook Frank Kent was characterized as “very merry.”

kent 1917 draftAfter serving in World War I and being discharged in 1919 Kent sold clothing in his father’s store in Clinton for eight years.

kent 1920 censusKent was still in his hometown selling clothing in 1920.

kent 1929 webb-northBut in 1927 he moved to Fort Worth to sell used cars for Sanford Webb and Earle North’s dealership, which sold Buicks and, for a single year, Marquettes. Later in 1927 Kent started his own General Motors Truck Company.

kent 1930 censusBut Kent sold the truck dealership in 1929 and moved to Lubbock to open Kent Buick Company.

kent 1930 webb-kent adIn 1930 Kent moved back to Fort Worth to renew his association with Sanford Webb, buying out Earle North and becoming a junior partner in Webb-Kent Buick dealership at 13th and Burnett streets.

kent 1932By 1932 Webb-Kent was selling Pontiacs.

 

In 1935 Kent had his own Ford-Zephyr-Lincoln dealership on West 7th Street.

kent 1935The 1936 Lincoln-Zephyr had a twelve-cylinder engine.

kent 1940 censusFrank Kent’s wife Florence was the daughter of Lily Peak Jones and the granddaughter of Florence Peak, wife of Carroll Peak, Fort Worth’s first doctor. Mrs. Kent probably was named for her grandmother. Olive Peak, living next door on Wilshire Boulevard, was the sister of Lily Peak Jones.

kent 1940 new locationIn 1940 Frank Kent moved his dealership from 1101 West 7th Street to a new facility at Lancaster and Main streets.

frank kent 1940sThis photo is from the 1940s. The seven-acre dealership was built on the site of the 1899 Texas & Pacific passenger terminal.

The dealership as seen in 1945 from the Texas & Pacific passenger station. (Photo from University of Texas as Arlington Library.)

Frank Kent also was a Texaco dealer. The building on the left is the 1886 Joseph H. Brown building. Also on the left is one corner of the Al Hayne memorial, which until about 2006 was a traffic triangle between Houston and Main streets. (Photo from Tarrant County College NE, Heritage Room.)

kent 1940 radioAt Christmastime in 1940 you could buy a Lincoln-Zephyr, household appliances, radios, sporting goods, and bicycles at the new dealership. Frank Kent is on the left in the photo.

kent 1953 caddy dealerIn 1953 Kent gave up the Ford franchise and bought a Cadillac franchise after the previous franchise holder was convicted of income tax evasion. The previous dealership, located at 712 West 7th Street, had been selling about three hundred Cadillacs a year. Kent soon was selling fourteen hundred a year.

kent 1953 tailfin adFrank Kent became a Cadillac dealer just as tailfins were becoming all the rage. This ad from October 1953 shows the modest tailfins of the new 1954 models. (The Le Mans was a concept car, but the production models had the same modest tailfins.) General Motors design chief Harley Earl is credited with introducing tailfins on cars with the 1948 Cadillac. Earl took his inspiration from the twin tail booms of the Lockheed P-38 fighter plane.

kent 1958 59 model“Motordom’s New Measurement” indeed! Designer Harley Earl retired in 1958 after designing the garage-busting “King Fin Caddie” of 1959. A 1959 Eldorado is 225 inches (18.75 feet) long. In 1959 a new Eldorado cost about $7,400 ($60,000 today). Only about 2,300 were made.

kent 1986 explosionIn 1984 the widening of the Lancaster/I-30 overpass corridor chopped three acres off the seven-acre Frank Kent lot, so the dealership moved to the Benbrook Traffic Circle. Thus, on March 12, 1986 the old dealership building was empty except for an inventory of fifty-seven cars when a backhoe operator working on the property for the city water department ruptured a Lone Star Gas pipe. Before Lone Star workers could contain the leak, an explosion and ensuing fire destroyed the dealership building, shattered nearby windows, rattled windows several blocks away, and injured twenty-two people.

”It seemed like a volcano or something,” said James Taylor, a seventh-grader who was on a bus passing the site when the explosion occurred. ”I was real scared.”

Taylor and the twenty-one other people were treated at hospitals, mostly for lacerations from flying glass and debris, and released.

Officials at Frank Kent Cadillac said the value of the cars destroyed (valued then at $20,000-$24,000 each) was $1.5 million.

Deputy Fire Chief Don Peacock said investigators suspected that the pilot light of a water heater in the dealership building ignited the leaking gas.

Archival news footage from WBAP-TV (at 9:40 in the clip).

Devoid of DeVilles: An expanse of concrete is all that remains of the Frank Kent lot.

kent 1987 obit 1 smallFrank Kent remained active in his dealership until his death on September 13, 1987, just two days short of his ninety-second birthday.

kent 1987 obit 1“Mr. Cadillac” shared the front page with Pope John Paul II.

kent graveFrank Diffenbacher Kent is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

Kent’s granddaughter, Wendy Kent Churchill, who in 1967 had become vice president/treasurer of the company, estimated that the dealership sold thirty-one thousand Cadillacs during Frank Kent’s thirty-four years as a dealer. Kent leased a new Cadillac to the city of Fort Worth every other year for one dollar a year. Famous customers included Liberace (pink Eldorado), actress Martha Ray, Governor John Connally, and Fort Worth oilman Sid Richardson, who once had Kent dispatch a fleet of Cadillacs to Dallas to circle the Adolphus Hotel while Richardson sat in the hotel’s coffee shop and shopped for a new Caddy from a window.

In 1989 Kent was posthumously inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Detroit.

Following Frank Kent’s death, Wendy Kent Churchill remained an owner and director. In 1999 she became owner and president of the company. Upon her death in 2005 ownership passed to her children, Will Churchill and Corrie Watson. Frank Kent Motor Company still owns and operates the family’s Cadillac, Hyundai, and Fisker dealerships. The Cadillac dealership today is located on Loop 820 South.

“Tearin’ Up the Highway Like a Big Ol’ Dinosaur”

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6 Responses to Roll Model: Cowtown’s Cadillac King

  1. Danny Hubbard says:

    We felt the blast at our house on the east side, near Meadowbrook golf course. The ground shook a little and freaked the dog out lol.

  2. Bob Cushman says:

    Frank Kent didn’t have a Ford and Lincoln-Mercury dealership in 1935. It was Ford and Lincoln. Mercury was a concept in 1935 and didn’t exist as an independent line within the Ford Motor Company until 1938.

    • hometown says:

      Thank you for that information. I have added a 1935 ad for his “Ford-Zephyr-Lincoln” dealership and deleted “Mercury.”

  3. According to a 1946 record I have, my grandfather did a total of 10 different design projects for Frank Kent before 1946. Most were related to his modification of business buildings.

  4. earl belcher says:

    Then there is the accidental blast. At the time the history folks were blocking the bulldozing of the old Kent building. It looked like they might win. Then the big old fire put an end to that. Let’s see, Mr. Insurance Adjuster, there was all those new cars, my art collection. And, of course, that building. Ohh woe is me. Looks like 30 to 40 million. Oh heck, just round it up to 50 mil.

  5. earl belcher says:

    OK, Sid, I’m gonna out-Texan you. When I get rich I’ll have the Rolls Royce/Bentley dealership drive their fleet around a Whataburger and pick me one or two . . . No, I will pick the one I don’t want and buy the rest. In the late 1950s all the young newshounds hung out in their police radio-equipped cars at the Frank Kent lot. Like the famous David “Snaps” Russel Speed Graphic 4×5 format camera ready to capture news pics to sell to the Press or Startlegram.

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