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Showing posts from June 28, 2009

Bear Automotive

The Bear brand, an iconic symbol of excellence in automotive service equipment, particularly wheel alignment equipment, passed into history recently when Cartek decided to retire the brand. It was a rather sad day for me because I once ran the group in Applied Power which had acquired this company from the decendents of the Damman brothers in the late 1960's. The Damman's had started the company in 1917 (an interesting history of the Bear business can be found here ) and at it's peak in the 1940's and 1950's the Bear logo displayed outside most good service stations was known nationwide as a smybol of a place where good automotive service could be found. It was a classic and I will miss it.