After more than 40 years, end of the road for Southern California's Cal Worthington car dealership
Many of those commercials were filmed under the large “Worthington Ford in Long Beach” sign at the dealership he bought in 1963.
Now that sign has come to mark the end of an era. Worthington’s family said they have sold the 3-acre business, the last dealership still bearing the name of the legendary car salesman who died in 2012.
“It’s very sad,” Nick Worthington, Cal’s grandson, said in an interview with ABC7. “Our employees have been with us 40 plus years.
“It’s a part of everyone’s childhood and life growing up here,” he added. “It’s hard to close that book for everybody.”
On Saturday, Shawn Abdallah, finance director at the dealership, said news of the sale “came as a shock, although there had been rumors for a couple of months that something like this was in the works.”
“The rumors were confirmed on Thursday,” he said, “when Nick had everyone gather in a conference room here for an important message.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/after-more-than-40-years-end-of-the-road-for-southern-california-s-cal-worthington-car-dealership/ar-AA17ERza?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=044ef2b487a2477ea3df8d747775f91f
The buyer, Nouri/Shaver Automobile Group, plans to keep all the Worthington Ford employees, but they will have to reapply for their jobs, Abdallah said.
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I brought him up recently to a friend who is from California of that era, using it to describe the level of finesse of something, she spit out coffee and laughed really hard. It was almost like a cryptic joke that only people subjected to it would understand.
And then, Johnny Carson used to rag on him from time to time and even had him on the show at least once.
I used to drive past it regularly when I was in that part of the world.
That dentist in Escondido who had strange, home made commercials with dancing, cutout paper doll shaped opaque figures dancing across the bottom of the screen?
And Cal Worthington, of course was the teevee commercial king of southern California when I first arrived in '72.
"I'll eat a bug..."
"I'll stand on my head 'til my ears are turnin' red..."
And he made millions.
And in San Diego, early 70s, many of the commercials were like home made affairs and kind of sketchy, made teevee watching a bummer. Not that there was anything worth watching, really. And even Cal's ads looked professional in comparison, the commercials were just so sub par it was almost embarrassing.
That dentist in Escondido, though, burned in my memory right next to Cal. 
