LaRue C. Thomas, 93; L.A. Cadillac Dealer Collected Classic Luxury Cars
LaRue C. Thomas, who founded downtown’s Thomas Cadillac and amassed a collection of about 100 classic luxury cars, has died. He was 93.
Thomas died Friday in Rancho Palos Verdes of unspecified causes.
A native of Plattsmouth, Neb., who grew up in Southern California, Thomas began buying old cars, refurbishing them and selling them when he was a teenager.
At 21, he went into the garage and car sales business with his father, Cecil, in San Pedro. They sold Studebakers, then Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles and GMC trucks, and leased cars in the 1950s. After moving their operation to Harbor City, the family acquired the Cadillac franchise in downtown Los Angeles in 1965.
LaRue Thomas established Thomas Cadillac Inc. in an eight-story building at 7th and Bixel streets and built it into one of the nation’s biggest dealerships for the luxury car. The family closed the business in 1989 as the neighborhood and tastes in cars changed.
But for a quarter-century, the building’s sixth floor housed one of the finest and least-known private collections of automobiles in the country -- vintage Cadillacs from 1903 to the “big boat” 1976 Eldorado convertible, and other special vehicles, including a 1922 Studebaker like the one in which LaRue Thomas learned to drive, and a 1923 Ford roadster like the one he drove in his youth.
“I enjoy the nostalgia of it, being able to look at what our forefathers did and to better appreciate their contribution to all our lives,” he told The Times in 1989, as he walked through the collection he was about to disperse.
A favorite car? That was the 1929 Chrysler coupe that he drove to Reno when he and his wife eloped.
Thomas is survived by his wife of 69 years, Glennie; two sons, Gerald and William; a brother, Donald; two sisters, Janet Halliday and Betty VanAcker; nine grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.
Services are scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday at Green Hills Memorial Chapel, 27501 Western Ave., in Rancho Palos Verdes.
The family has asked that instead of flowers, memorial donations be made to Shriners Hospital for Children, 3160 Geneva St., Los Angeles 90020.
