In 1999, Boch's Subaru distribution firm was sued by several Subaru dealers, claiming the cars it provided were padded with unwanted options to boost profits at their expense. Boch argued that he wanted to fix breakfast without going downstairs. Edgartown zoning officials sued him for putting a kitchen on each of the three floors, saying it created a multi-family house. The 10-room, 3,000-square-foot house sat on a 15-acre lot with a 2,000-foot driveway. He won a zoning battle in the 1980s to build a $5 million home in Edgartown that dwarfed neighboring homes on the harbor. When neighbors of his dealerships complained about noise and traffic, Boch bought their houses in 1990. He later added Honda, Mitsubishi and Kia dealerships.
The Subaru distributorship grew to supply nearly 60 dealers in New England, and the Toyota dealership became one of the largest in the area. "He saw that and said ?This is bound to be popular."? "Back in the late ?60s the domestic carmakers controlled 50 percent of the market - and the Japanese came in with much smaller cars, much more fuel efficiency and front wheel drive," Ernest Boch Jr. The move to Japanese cars didn't bear fruit until the oil crisis of the mid-1970s, his son recalled. That was tested in 1971, when he took on the New England distributorship for Subaru and added a Toyota dealership, at the same time dropping Dodge for Oldsmobile. His philosophy was: "If I think I'm right, I stick to it," Boch told a Patriot Ledger reporter in 1989. "I don't care how much money he had, he always worked," McDonough told The Patriot Ledger. Norwood Dodge owner Bob McDonough, owner of Norwood Dodge, said that Boch not only established the "automile" strip but continued to lead other dealers in the delicate balance of competition and cooperation. In the auto business, he was a true icon," Daniel Quirk, a longtime competitor, told The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. "Ernie achieved a certain level of success that not many people in business will ever accomplish.
He saw the future."īoch's competitors said he set a high standard for success in the industry.
"A big, big attribute to his being successful was he knew what was coming down the pike before it came down the pike. "If he had anything, he had the gift of vision," his son said. said his father was a driven worker with a knack for spotting trends before they became popular. Boch Broadcasting operates WCOD-FM, WXTK-FM and WTWV-FM, which broadcasts on two frequencies.īoch was known for his appearances in his own commercials, in which he smashed windshields while telling customers he was smashing prices, and invited people to "Come on down!"Įrnest Boch Jr. His Boch Enterprises is comprised of 18 companies overall, including the Subaru distributorship for New England. He was 77.īoch owned a string of car dealerships that lined Norwood's "automile" on Route 1. His son, Ernest Boch Jr., said his father died Sunday at his home in Edgartown of complications of liver cancer, which he had been fighting for a year and a half. "Ernie" Boch, a multimillionaire car dealer and businessman known to thousands for his personal television commercials, has died.
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