The former Downtown Dodge Chrysler site, Toronto

When Gord and I decided to buy a new car in March 2004, we went to our local car lot, Downtown Dodge Chevrolet.

We walked around looking at the cars but nothing really grabbed us. Greg, a sales guy, came out and really started doing a hard sales job on us. He even insisted that we borrow a Neon for the afternoon so we could check it out and run any errands.

Um, okay.

The "errand" we had planned for the afternoon was to drive to different car lots to check out cars. For security reasons, we had to leave him the registration and keys to our car, which was understandable.

We ended up checking out maybe five car lots in the west end of Toronto. The second one we went to is where we found the car we ended up buying.

When we returned the car to Greg, I sat in our car while Gord went to get the registration and keys. He was gone a long long time so I finally went looking for him.

I found him inside with Greg, his manager and another sales person. It's like they were holding the registration and keys hostage until we bought a car from them. Really?!! Needless to say, if there was a glimmer of a chance we'd buy a car there, it disappeared then. We got stern and said to give us our stuff back now, which they did.

Greg called us every evening for a couple weeks trying to sell us a car, even after we told him that we'd decided to buy one elsewhere.

The King streetcar tracks were replaced a couple years ago. Downtown Dodge Chrysler closed shortly after they finished repairing the part in our 'hood. I had read they said it was because our part of King Street W was closed for months which cut off traffic that could have been coming to their lot to buy a car.

Rumours started right away that there would be condos going up there. And eventually the DNA3 signs when up.

Over the years, the space was rented out for various events including Toronto Fashion Week.

Last week, the demolition walls went up around the site which means the building will be coming down soon.

Here it is this morning.

Here's the same view as the last picture as it looked in the 1980s.

From blogTO:

The King West of the 1980s was a remarkably different place than today. One of those areas that's undergone an almost complete transformation, prior to a condo boom that kicked off in the late 1990s, for over 100 years the street was dominated by Massey Ferguson, one of the world's leading manufacturers of agricultural equipment. The Toronto Works of Massey Ferguson took up much of the area along King West from Bathurst to Sudbury Street as far back as the late 19th century when the company was Toronto's leading employer.