Saw an old post about a 69 Camaro with a Washburn Chevrolet Santa Barbara label. Poster wanted to know info about the dealership and got a few replies about C&H Chevrolet - Santa Barbara.......Here's the real history.......The store was George Young, Inc. beginning in 1932-33. George Young was a GM district mgr from Saint Louis and came to Calif. w/wife and daughter and bought the store. Got real smart toward the end of WWII and bought every used car he could find and stored them in barns and garages all over the county so, when WW2 ended, and car production took a while to resume in 1946, he had tons of cars to sell and that put him in a position to build a new dealership at 614 Chapala St - santa Barbara. The original building was next to the Morton Bay Fig tree at the bottom of Chapala Street before hwy 101 was put through the property.. That one had stop lites at Chapala, State and DeLaVina Streets...... George Young remained the dealer until he retired in the 50's and his son-in-law, Shelly Washburn took it over and it was renamed Washburn Chevrolet. He kept the store until 1970 when he sold it to a friend from the LA area and moved to Santa Rosa CA and bought an MG/Jag/Alfa store. During the time in Santa Barbara, he decided to begin sponsoring a 1958 Corvette in SCCA racing. After the 1st year, Bob Bondurant began driving it and it was the fastest Corvette in the country (despite some gripes from factory sponsored East-coasters. The engine/chassiswas developed by Bob JoehncK (google that name). He was one of the best (and smartest) engine builders-developers around......How about open-chamber FI heads in 1961?? He did that on his own and they were worth about 30 more HP at high RPM than everyone elses. at a race in Monterey, the car lapped everyone else except the 2d place car who was half a lap behind. In 1962, Shelly Washburn got 1963 Corvette (production # 3). Bob Bondurant drove it from the factory back to Santa Barbara; the car spent less than week at Bob Joehnck's shop and was immediately taken to the LA Times 3hr. enduro at Riverside in October. The car underwent interior stripping and roll bar installation and open side exhaust but was essentially stock. It overheated two hours into the race and Bondurant had to bring it in and quit the race. It later went on to win 30 of 32 races despite a lack of factory sponsorship. The car was later sold to Vic Edelbrock and you can see it today in his catalog and vintage races. Washburn then sponsored a 1967 Z-28 Camaro
with Tony Settember driving but the factory was getting involved and it was getting too expensive to continue....How do I know all this.........E-Z...George Young's daughter, Phyllis, was my mom...and yes, I still play with cars