RIP Cal Worthington

"If You Want A Better Car Go See Cal"

It's been years since I've seen one of his ads but I can still it - and he didn't mind if he got mocked so as long as you bought a car from one of his dealerships.


Cal Worthington died Sunday at the age of 92. If the name doesn't ring a bell, you (a) never lived in Southern California; (b) don't watch car dealer commercials on TV, (c) never worked in sales, or (d) all the above.
Mr. Worthington was the Los Angeles-area car dealer whose angular features, cowboy suit and ubiquitous "Dog Spot" (an animal that was never a canine) graced thousands of commercials over a career more than 50 years. The Television Advertising Bureau described him as the "greatest car pitchman" in the history of the medium, and it's hard to disagree...


Most advertising "pros" recoil at the Worthington model; by their standards, he did almost everything wrong. In an era that favored smooth-talking announcers, Cal looked and sounded like your uncle from Oklahoma (where he was born and grew up during the Dust Bowl). His spots weren't particularly artistic, but they certainly caught your attention. There was Cal, doing a headstand on the hood of a car, promising to "stand on my head, 'til my ears turn red" (to sell a vehicle). The background music was a jingle that was lifted from "If You're Happy and You Know It," with a home-spun chorus telling viewers to "Go see Cal/Go see Cal/Go See Cal" about every three seconds. Incidentally, the jingle had 26 stanzas, for those keeping score at home. Worthington wrote it himself.


...In passing, Cal Worthington will be largely remembered for those thousands of TV commercials that made him a cultural icon. But that does him something of a disservice; Worthington belonged to that same generation of Americans that included men like Ray Kroc and Sam Walton; businessmen who were salesmen at heart, that knew what their customers wanted and sold the hell out of their product line. Selling, as practiced by a Walton, Kroc or Worthington, is an art. But unfortunately, it's a dying art; today's generation seems less interested in closing the deal if it can't be done on-line."



I never bought a vehicle from him but past his huge dealership on the San Diego Freeway all the time.