Glen Staropoli, owner of Royal Chevrolet, the oldest Chevy dealer in Somerset County, is seen at the dealership on the 100th anniversary of the automaker. / TOM SPADER/ASBURY PARK PRESS/TOM SPADER/NJ PRESS

Written by Sergio Bichao | Staff Writer

BRIDGEWATER — Time was when the customers at the Staropoli family’s Royal Chevrolet dealership lived no more than 20 miles away.

A few weeks ago, however, the Route 22 dealership sold a used SUV to someone from Richmond, Va. That was after they had sold a convertible to a customer in Albany, N.Y.

As Chevrolet celebrates its centennial this week, dealership owner Glen Staropoli notes that one of the more important changes to the automobile-selling industry has come from the Internet.

“In my 40 years here, nothing ever has affected the automobile business like the computer has,” he said. “Now you have the websites out there for anybody in any state to look at.”

When his father and mother first opened the Chevy dealership on Union Avenue in Bound Brook in 1966, and decades later with Staropoli and his brother Gary took over, there were no computers.

“We wrote the order by hand, we took the credit applications by hand, we called it in by phone. We then typed our own paperwork, then delivered the car,” he said.

It may have been drudgery compared to now, but Staropoli remembers an employee selling 516 new Chevy cars in 1978, even without the help of computers.

“It’s a standard I don’t think we will ever reach again in this area,” he said “That shows you how strong the Chevy brand was at the time.

When their father started, the Chevy “sold itself.” In the 1980s, however, with deteriorating quality control and competition from Japan, sales fell off, and so did brand loyalty.

“It wasn’t until the mid ’90s that (the U.S. auto manufacturers) started to realize they had to put a new premium on the product. People are coming over now.”

“In my mind, I think of tradition, I think of tremendous value. Chevy stands for backbone quality,” he said. “The old commercial used to be, ‘baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.’ It was the American way.”

Started by Swiss race car driver and engineer Louis Chevrolet and General Motors executive William Crapo Durant in 1911, Chevrolet became part of GM in 1917. As GM’s top brand, Chevy sells about 4 million vehicles a year worldwide.

Chevy introduced the world’s first SUV as well as icons such as the Corvette, the Camaro and the Corvair — which became target of Ralph Nader’s 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed,” sparking new car-safety regulations.

Half of Royal’s sales are preowned. Among new sales, half are trucks. The top seller is the Cruze, which this year surpassed the previous favorite, the Malibu.

Last year the dealership, which employs 45 people, pulled in $27.8 million in sales. The dealership has been on Route 22 since 1999.

Years ago the top concern for customers was performance, Staropoli said. Today more and more customers look at leasing deals and gas mileage.

Appropriately, the company’s newest model is the electric Volt, which can run 40 miles on battery.

“Degree of loyalty to any manufacturer today is nowhere near what it used to be when I started,” he said. “I think it’s generational. I don’t know what has caused that transition.

“Maybe it’s the Internet and the ability to shop so easily. Each generation that has come up, (brand loyalty) gets a little less.”