Published: October 15, 2008 09:33 pm            

Nearly 70 years of service: Longtime car dealer retires

CLINTON — People have driven hundreds of miles just to buy a car from soft-spoken, unassuming “Louie” Rendaci, and over his 691⁄2-year career, that has amounted to around 6,300 cars for Chrysler Corp.

That is one of the reasons Chrysler just gave Rendaci a new, loaded minivan for his retirement from Mike’s Motors in Clinton.

“It’s people like Louie who make our business,” said David Woodget, Chrysler Midwest Business Center district manager.

It’s people such as Louie who also make five-star dealerships such as Mike’s Motors and communities such as Clinton.

“It’s more of a family feeling when you buy a car from Louie,” said Mike’s Motors’ Joe Chambers, Rendaci’s son-in-law. “Just over the past few days, half a dozen or so people have hurried in to be able to buy just one more car from him.” And over the past three days, friends, family and customers have packed into Mike’s Motors to say goodbye and to help culminate Rendaci’s nearly 70 years of service.

“You treat customers right, they’ll be back,” Rendaci said. Honesty and integrity are the two main ingredients to his success, he added. Chambers said people will drive a long way for that.

“One day, I had a call from a guy in North Carolina. He said, ‘Just tell Louie I’m coming to buy a new car. He knows what I like. Just have him pick one out and I’ll just write him a check when I get there,’” Chambers said. “The same day, I got a call from a guy in Texas who said the same thing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Born Louis Rendaci in Vermillion County, his family moved to Italy when he was about 5. In the 1930s, the Rendacis hoped to escape tribulation under Mussolini’s reign and the rumblings of a second world war. They returned to the United States and Clinton, where they remained and Louie, at age 13, now fluent in Italian and relearning English, lost his parents soon after, and later his brothers, to death. At 15, his cousin Mike and his family took Louie in. Mike pulled Louie from the eighth grade, saying he needed to learn a trade.

“Times were tough in ’39,” Rendaci said. “I wanted to go to school but Mike insisted I come to work for him and learn a trade. … It’s a trade I haven’t neglected.” So, at 16 years old he began working nights on repairs and manning a wrecker service, putting in 13 hours a night, seven nights a week. He took a short stint working with the Indianapolis 500 and ended up going off to war, where he served as an Italian interpreter for the U.S. Army, but he always seemed to return to Mike’s Motors. In 1955, he began selling cars full time, where he would remain for the next 52 years. As Chambers noted the attendance over the past three days, he said, “It’s part of the mystic. Everybody’s an old friend.”

“They’re family, that’s the way I feel,” Rendaci said, looking over the friends who had gathered. “I’m not just here to sell a car, I’m here to make a friend and it’s proven out that way,” he said as he nodded his head, still using the present tense. It’s evident his retirement will not be an easy thing to settle into.

        

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