Twin City at 50: An origin story

A Q&A with Nate Barrett, looking back and looking forward after 50 years of the Twin City dealership in Lafayette.

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Q&A: A TWIN CITY ORIGIN STORY

This morning brings a conversation with Nate Barrett, who earlier in December helped ring in the 50^th anniversary of the Twin City auto dealership in Lafayette.

Barrett, president of Twin City Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM Fiat at 3838 Indiana 38 East, is grandson of the late Don Trout, who founded the dealership in 1974 at the corner of Sagamore Parkway and Kossuth Street. A between-holidays conversation last week with Barrett – a Harrison High School and Purdue grad who also co-hosts the Boilermaker Sports Wrap on The Purdue Radio Network – included some history, changes and some potential future for the generational dealership.

Question: Let’s talk about the origin story for Twin City.

Nate Barrett: My grandfather, Don Trout, a Marine Corps veteran from Terre Haute, Indiana, came out of the Glenn Home orphanage there. He was taken in by the Joy family that eventually had Gran-Ma Joy's restaurant in Terre Haute. They took him in as a foster, and he stayed with them until he went in the Marine Corps and fought in the Korean conflict. He was in the Marine Corps during most of the 1950s, came back to Terre Haute and was getting ready to go to work in a factory. A buddy of his said, “Hey, Don, have you thought about selling cars?” That’s what he did. The rest is history.

Question: What was he selling in Terre Haute?

Nate Barrett: He sold everything in Terre Haute. He worked at the Ford store. In the ensuing years, he sold at a Pontiac store, he sold at a Dodge store, he sold it at a Chrysler store. He had two used car lots of his own, and then went back to work for dealers. He worked for Doan and Decker Ford. He worked at Vigo Dodge. Then he got an opportunity in late-’73. Chrysler had what they call an MID point – management investment division – and they gave him an opportunity to come up here and try to get a store in Lafayette turned around. They were in the process of building a Chrysler Realty facility at Sagamore and Kossuth. When he left downtown and came out to that facility at Sagamore and Kossuth, that's when they switched the name to Twin City Dodge.

Nate Barrett shows a photo of the original Twin City Dodge, displayed at the dealership today. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

Question: He’d been near 12^th and Main streets, right?

Nate Barrett: He had. That building was originally built in 1951 as Horner Chevrolet, the pre-runner to DeFouw. One of my favorite parts about talking about that building is my grandfather's first call that he got when he came to Lafayette was from Bill DeFouw, himself, welcoming him to town. Imagine a competitor reaching out and doing that. And they were friends ever since. But why that building is neat to me is because that was also the first building that Bill DeFouw arrived in when he came here in 1961, because the new DeFouw facility wasn't built yet out on the Parkway. And it's DeFouw that really represents the era of the dealers moving from downtown out to the Parkway. Chrysler followed suit in ’73-‘74 and built the new building at Sagamore and Kossuth, which is the neighbor to DeFouw. That's when he switched the name to Twin City.

Question: Was there a reason he went with Twin City?

Nate Barrett: He was not the kind of guy that wanted his name on the building. That was not something that appealed to him. He was kind of a private person in some ways, but he thought with Lafayette and West Lafayette, that's what made sense.

Question: How did he fit in with the rest of the auto dealers in that time. You had some big personalities in that era.

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