I used to shoot down to Chicago and buy stuff at the warehouse. Super sketchy as the counter guy had a catalog with higher prices than the catalog mailed to your house. I loved picking through that catalog.
They moved to rural Illinois twenty years ago but it just wasn't happening.......
I drove by and dozens of containers/trailers along with a company picking up the electric fork lift thingies.
Their catalog came to our house all through the 70's and 80's. I'm sure I've bought stuff from them, but I'm not sure what exactly. Seat covers, almost certainly, and a bunch of other stuff.
Once I bought as "show bar" from them for one of my Nissans and it actually came from Autopower. I bought a custom exhaust and that was a known brand too. (Stebro?)
Some product was decent but they didn't call out brand names in the early to mid-80's.
This is the place I most associate with the insanity of a "universal" part.
Taking a dump will never be the same.
Where will we get our aooga horns?
In 1995 when we needed rebuild parts for the 235 in my 54 chevy they were one of the only sources. They had a lot of carpet and stuff for the old cars too. Absolutely a lot of credit for their demise goes to not pivoting to the internet like Summit or Speedway did. PAW was the same, when everyone else was setting up online stores they were still catalog/phone only
David S. Wallens said:Where will we get our aooga horns?
From Amazon or E-Bay Motors. Which is what probably killed the catalog place.
https://www.amazon.com/ahooga-horn/s?k=ahooga+horn
I'm pretty sure you could build an a/c beetle from that catalog part by part at some point.
In the seventies I was rebuilding the engine in my '61 Sunbeam Alpine. I needed four matching pistons. (Of course, matching). After 3-4 attempts, they still couldn't get it right.
They sold all kinds of cool stuff: Addco sway bars, convertible tops for British cars, toilet paper oil filters, those dashboard switch labels for VWs using silly German-sounding words!
I miss the old catalogs, too, but when the company first filed for bankruptcy many years ago, I recall that their two biggest creditors were the catalog publishers.
As I understand it, the old parts company lives on at Car Parts.
I wonder how much stuff they have in stock and how much gets drop shipped.
Thats how I remember getting stuff from them decades ago.
In reply to Patrick :
Aw, man, why'd you have to remind me of PAW. I remember balking at their 392 kits because they were something like $8,000. If I only knew.
Funny, I just found this catalog in a box tucked in my basement. Prices expired on 11/26/1985.
When I lived in Illinois we would go to the big car show they put on at the warehouse in Peru(?) maybe? It was huge! I bought the flares and slots for my van from them in 1996 and the bestop convertible kit for my dakota in 1997 or so.
In reply to jimbob_racing :
My uncle still uses those E36 M3ty wire thin coil over shock helpers on everything "because it stiffens it up"
All the auto accessories that "fit" your car, kinda. Maybe.
i got familiar with JCW in the 90's.it was mostly crap at that point.
when i see an "old man truck" with generic accessories all over it, I still call it a "jc Whitney special".
jimbob_racing said:
Oh, man! The memories! You know damn good and well that wasn't your last catalog, no matter what that label on the cover said. My dad got those catalogs regularly in the 80s. I spent many an evening rifling through the seemingly endless listings for chrome trinkets, seat covers, running boards, sheetmetal for cars I'd never own, and of course, motorcycle helmets, fairings, gloves, and tires. As a dirt bike crazy kid in the 80s, the only thing less cool than a stepped king-and-queen seat for your old GS450 was the old trials universal tire. It was exactly the kind of tire that would be bought by old men who were buying the transparent American-flag-and-eagle rear window decals and chrome bug deflectors and all the other tchotchke for their pickups found on the other pages in that catalog. And yet I couldn't stop looking, because there might be something new or worthwhile on the next page. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe.
I bought one thing and one thing only from JC Whitney in the mid-90s. They listed a 3/4" front sway bar for my '79 Corolla, and everybody knew it was Addco, so I bought it. A few months later I found a surprise charge on the card I'd bought it with for some impossibly crooked "credit protection" service. Apparently the nice people at JC Whitney had sold my name and address to some super sketchy outfit that sent out a letter requiring the recipient to decline enrollment or else be charged ~$300 for their nonsense program. I contested the charge and only got my money back after threatening to have family in the area (actually, my late grandmother, but they didn't need to know that) come pay them a visit. I didn't have a stellar impression of JC Whitney to begin with, and that whole series of events really soured me for good. It really reinforced the notion that they were old-school hucksters.
I miss the catalogs for nostalgia's sake, but that's about it. I miss the Sears Wishbook, too, but I have no desire for a terrycloth Pac-Man bathrobe.
You younguns don't realize that in the early 70's if you lived in a rural area they were about the only source for the cool stuff you needed. Especially if it involved AC bugs.
End of an era.
As a child, I swore I'd build an army jeep entirely from their catalog.
Then again, that era ended long ago.
My Dart's interior came from there - both seat covers and carpets.
wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) said:End of an era.
As a child, I swore I'd build an army jeep entirely from their catalog.
Then again, that era ended long ago.
Same. Strong memories of seeing pretty much every part imaginable to build a flat fender Jeep from nothing.
Being the pack-rat that I am, I probably have a couple of old catalogs buried in my attic somewhere.
That became my Christmas wish catalog when I got my first car.... I specifically remember the hood scoop collections.
I built a VW engine from their catalog.
They've been owned by carparts.com for some time now, and the website is still active: https://www.carparts.com/jc-whitney
When I was a kid, I'd read through the catalog and every part was guaranteed to gain 5 or 10 or 15 hp - I wondered if you bought them all the numbers could be added together so you'd gain 100hp. 
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