Boeckmann Is Car Dealer, Power Broker

Bert Boeckmann began what would be a lucrative career in the car business as a salesman at the very dealership that he would later own.

Fresh out of USC, Boeckmann began selling cars at Galpin Ford in 1953. He had majority control by 1964, and he bought the North Hills operation outright in 1968.

Next door, he opened the Horseless Carriage restaurant--thought to be the nation’s first car dealership restaurant--filling an obvious need for customers wanting a place to wait while repairs are made and for would-be customers to mull over their transactions.

“Bert Boeckmann is just one hell of a car dealer,” Ted Orme, spokesman for the National Automobile Dealership Assn., once said.

Today, Boeckmann’s operation is the nation’s leader in Ford sales and has grown to include Lincoln/Mercury, Jaguar and Saturn.

Besides being an auto magnate, the Northridge resident is a political power broker. Boeckmann began his lengthy tenure on the Los Angeles Police Commission in 1984, resigning in 1991 after refusing to disclose his financial assets under a new city ethics law. Some of those requirements have since been changed. At the request of Mayor Richard Riordan in 1993, Boeckmann rejoined the board that sets policy for the 9,280-member Police Department.

He has also served on the Local Agency Formation Commission of Los Angeles, the California New Motor Commission and former Mayor Tom Bradley’s blue-ribbon committee on budget and finance.

In 1981, he and his wife, Jane, publisher of Valley magazine, helped found the San Fernando Valley Cultural Foundation, which is trying to build an arts park in the Sepulveda Basin.