Time to Switch Gears : Bill Norton will retire after three decades of selling obsolete Ford pieces from push rods to pistons.
Fixing up old cars ranks right behind mom, apple pie and baseball as a hallowed American institution.
So it isn’t just the Valley but the nation that will feel the loss when Valley Ford Parts, the North Hollywood purveyor of “obsolete Ford motor parts,” shuts its doors after 30 years in business.
On the auction block Saturday through Monday will be a cornucopia of Ford fenders, doors, wheels, push rods, chrome pieces, pistons, radios, wind wings, gear-shift levers, emblems, screws, bolts and more dating back to 1909.
Owner Bill Norton, 55, is retiring from the car-parts business. He says he’s tired of keeping track of the inventory in his head.
He’s sold the property, just to make sure he can’t change his mind.
Norton worked on hot-rods when he was growing up in North Hollywood in the 1950s, but didn’t get into the auto parts business until the opportunity arose indirectly.
“It’s safe to tell it now, I suppose,” he says. “In 1961, I was a dispatcher for the old Valley Green Sheet, and every day I had so much free time that I’d take the company truck and buy Ford parts at junkyards.”
By 1963 he had enough stock to open a shop, on Friar Street near Van Nuys Boulevard in Van Nuys.
“It was really a mess when I started,” he says with irony, for the chaos never abated and indeed got worse in his shop as the years went by. “But car restoration really took off in the ‘60s and my business grew with it.”
He moved to his current location in 1971.
“At first I was renting, then I bought the place, then I bought the place next door. It just kept growing,” he says.
The stock swelled each year with Norton’s cross-country drives to the national auto swap in Hershey, Pa. He’d take a van and buy up whole parts departments from old Ford dealers across the country.
“They were as glad to get rid of them as I was to get ‘em,” he recalls.
His accumulating sometimes impinged on his family life. His usually shy wife, Terry, springs to life recalling several “romantic” vacations with Bill.
“I’ll never forget our pleasure cruise to Alaska. Bill bought out a Ford dealer in Juneau, and we rode home in a chi-chi stateroom completely filled with car parts. I was lucky when we went to Hawaii, though. All he bought there were Thunderbird antennas, and they fit in the airplane.”
The store has been closed the past month in preparation for the auction, but that hasn’t stopped people from cruising by and peering from their cars. Or, more forlornly, hanging on the chain-link fence.
“It’s the end of an era,” says Carl Hungness, publisher of the Indianapolis 500 Yearbook and retrofitter of many old Fords.
“Bill was a pioneer in what’s become a very big business. He’s known all over the world.”
Norton estimates that nearly half of his sales were overseas.
“Scandinavia is a big market. And old cars have really caught on in Australia and the Pacific. I got a fax today from a customer in Japan saying, even though we’d never met, he felt like he was losing an old friend.”
And he counted celebrities among his customers. “We’ve sold to ZZ Top, Andy Griffith, Elvis Presley, Jeff Beck, the king of Sweden.”
According to Norton’s customers and friends, it’s clear he is not only a supplier of arcane metal, but also a character.
Blessed--or cursed--with a Don Rickles personality and a voice like Michael Bolton gargling gravel, Norton ran his shop like a circus in a madhouse, unafraid of offending everyone.
He never failed to make an impression.
“Meeting Bill showed me that you didn’t necessarily have to grow up when you got older,” said Don Misraje, 30, a Valley videotape engineer who worked at Valley Ford Parts from age 13 to 16.
“Once at a swap meet, I saw a guy keep trying to get Bill to drop from $5 to $1 for an old taillight. At closing time, the guy came back and said, ‘Have you decided?’ Bill smashed it on the ground and said, ‘Yeah, it’s been sold.’ ”
He set prices, but would dicker.
He abused people, but took it in return.
He glued a penny to the floor to see which customers were cheapskates.
Bill was Bill, right to the end. On the last day of business, musician Doug Fieger of the Knack (“My Sharona”) purchased two 30-pound cylinder heads, and asked for a box.
“No boxes,” said Norton. “Didn’t you read the flyer?”
Fieger said no, and Norton moved as if to get him a box.
“Let me find you one of those flyers,” he said.
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WHERE AND WHEN
What: Auction of obsolete Ford motor parts.
Location: 11610 Vanowen Blvd.
Hours: 9 a.m. until the last customer leaves, Saturday through Monday.
Call: (818) 982-5303.
