The Gee Story
Every store here was someone's life's work.
The history of Gee Automotive and the family businesses that chose to join it, told with dates, sources and care.
Families serving families. Gee's guiding line
Begin in 1983Spokane, Washington
It started with one store.
In 1983, George and Theresa Gee opened a Pontiac store in Spokane. In the years since, other families who had spent their lives building dealerships chose to join them: the Tonkins in Portland, Lyle Pearson's team in Boise, the Clicks in Tucson, the Tuttles in Southern California, and more. This site keeps those stories in one place. Each family's history comes first, in its own words wherever we can get them. Every date has a source. Where we are still checking something, we say so.
The timeline
More than a hundred years, on one line.
More than a hundred years of car dealers, on one line. It starts in 1923, when a 17-year-old named Holmes Tuttle went to work at a Ford parts operation in Oklahoma City, and it runs to this year.
The family of stores
Their stories come first.
Each of these stores was built by someone: a father and son in Portland, a young couple in Tucson, a car man who brought Mercedes-Benz to Boise. Their pages start with their story, not ours.