After working at the Ford Motor Company dealership in Morton since he was 12 years old, Jim Van Cleve, 72, is “semi-retiring” from running the business his family built.
Additionally, the Van Cleve family has mutually agreed to part ways with Ford as Jim Van Cleve prepares to pass the dealership off to his son and daughter-in-law — James and Jennifer Van Cleve — who want to continue running the family business but also want more free time.
“They felt a little bit uncomfortable with the monumental task of representing Ford Motor Company … When you’re working for a corporation like Ford, you’re basically working six to seven days a week,” Jim said.
Formerly Van Cleve Ford Inc., the dealership is now known as Van Cleve Motors Inc., and will remain a used car dealership and automotive service center. It will no longer offer Ford warranty service or brand new Fords for sale.
Additionally, Jim will still be running Van Cleve Motors Inc. and working full time during this transition process.
“(James and Jennifer) have worked for me for about 17 years,” Jim said. “And my 17-year-old grandson has some interest in working at the dealership, too, when he’s through with school. So, the Van Cleve family is going to continue helping people with transportation needs.”
The Chronicle visited Van Cleve Motors on Tuesday, Oct. 15, to talk with Jim about the transition from the Ford partnership, which his grandfather, George Van Cleve, started nearly 90 years ago.
“My family actually had 87 years with Ford. My grandfather actually started out in 1937 in Eatonville, and we started here in Morton in 1953,” Jim said.
There had been a Ford dealership in Morton prior to 1953, but it burned down sometime in the late 1940s and the old owners never rebuilt it.
Jim’s father — a World War II and Korean War U.S. Army veteran who was also named Jim Van Cleve — worked in the motorpool while in the Army.
There, he tuned up cars for generals and other high ranking officers in Italy during World War II so they could be able to outrun German Nazi assassins riding motorcycles who would try to target them.
“If you’re into cars, you have probably heard of the name Edelbrock. He and Vic Edelbrock Sr. became buddies at boot camp in California before the war,” Jim said. “Those guys had the mentality of thinking outside the box, thinking how can they make an engine better instead of just repairing it.”
Following the end of the Korean War, Jim’s father was approached by United Airlines to work for them as he was a skilled mechanic, but he would’ve had to move out of Washington state to take the job, which his parents didn’t approve of.
During that time, he was also approached by Ford, which was looking to reestablish its Morton dealership. Given it wasn’t far from home in Eatonville, it wasn’t a hard choice for him to make.
Jim began working at the family’s dealership in 1965 before he was even a teenager, and it’s the only place he’s ever worked.
“I started from the bottom and worked my way up,” Jim said.
With both his father and grandfather having close ties to Ford, he grew up loving and racing Fords.
Jim even competed in drag racing competitions at the former Los Angeles County Fairgrounds dragstrip, now known as the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip. He’s also raced at the Ontario Motor Speedway in California for the NHRA world finals.
First, he raced in a tuned-up 1964 Ford Falcon, and won his way up to earning a spot with a Budweiser-sponsored drag race team driving a wildly tuned-up 1985 Ford Mustang.
“A lot of the people that came home from the war had high-octane fuel in their veins because of the intensity of military life. They came home and wanted to go racing cars and modifying cars. My dad started when we were just little, little kids, going to drag strips and seeing how fast we could go,” Jim said. “Still to this day, we do it too. We got three generations of drag racers. I still do it, my son does it, and my grandson now is doing it too.”
Jim still races the 1964 Falcon along with a tuned-up 1967 Ford Fairlane — which does a quarter-mile in 8.3 seconds, hitting 159 mph.
Van Cleve Motors is located at 302 Second St. in Morton. It is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
For more information, call the dealership at 360-469-5999 or visit its website at https://www.vanclevemotors.com/dealership/about.htm.
