In the early '70s, the corner of Upper James and Rymal was still the sticks.

Bill Nethercott was about to change that. He bought the site of a farm implement business and built a Chev dealership.

About 100,000 people lived on the Mountain then. Mohawk Ford was first to open on what would become the chaotic Upper James strip. Johnston Chrysler and Nethercott Chevrolet followed.

Nethercott opened with a loaded lot, row on row of American boats, V-8s galore. The car was king; gas was cheap.

Suddenly Bill Nethercott was in a pickle. The oil stopped arriving from the Middle East, people lined up at the pumps, prices zoomed, and the 1970s energy crisis was under way. Car sales took a dive.

Nethercott had been smart enough to order a lot of little Vegas and was able to move them. Still, it was brutal.

"I still have the statements," he says. "Once in awhile, I look at them."

Lessons learned? "You have to know how much you can afford to lose. And when you make money, keep it. Don't live high on the hog."

The crisis finally subsided, and North Americans went back to high-octane ways, in long vans, fat SUVs, beefy pickups. The Big Three were cleaning up.

In the gravy days, say 10 years ago, Nethercott Chev was selling 1,000 cars a year.

Now? About half that. "And we're not alone. Look at the GM statistics ... .

"Things are very bad. The Big Three are paying for their ignorance and mistakes over the years.

"They didn't see this energy crisis coming. And they've never had success with small cars."

He'd love to get his hands on some little Korean-made Chev Aveos. "They're the right step, but it's too late. We'd take 50 of them if we could, but we only get two or three at a time."

Nethercott, 74, still a licensed mechanic, knows lots about little cars. In the beginning, it was the Austin from England. His father sold them on Cannon East.

They were popular with soldiers home from war and with British immigrants. They had wee four-cylinder engines and four-speed manual transmissions. Father would hand out business cards with a penny stuck to the back. On the front it said, "This penny would take you a mile in an Austin."

When Nethercott was 16, Father sent him to Austin in England, where he split his time between the plant and Birmingham University. He came home unimpressed.

"Austin didn't care about the customer, didn't maintain quality, didn't listen to new ideas," he says.

Those Austins were troublesome critters. There were water leaks, wind noises, bad engines. The competition suddenly got tougher as 1950 approached and the Americans were putting out their first new postwar models.

For a time, the Nethercotts danced with Studebaker. Real success came when they partnered with Volkswagen in the mid-'50s, at a dealership on King East. It was risky, the war with Germany still strong in many minds.

"We had the Legion parading up and down. They said, 'Don't buy a Nazi car.'"

But people did buy the Beetle. Great on gas, and you could finance one for $10 a week.

Nethercott built a big dealership on Cannon East near Wellington in 1966, with 11 service bays. Six years later he sold it to the general manager, moved to the Mountain and switched to GM.

Son Bill Jr. owns that Upper James operation now. Nethercott Sr. owns the land and building for Airport Ford. Mountain Hyundai too, where sales are up.

For the domestics, Nethercott predicts continued tough times. Gemini Ford, for instance, in business some 40 years, ceased to be a Ford dealership last month. Now it's all used cars on the lot at Queenston and Nash.

As for other dealers, "they'll either fall or say, 'I'm not making any money. Why stay in it?'"

What does Nethercott himself have in the garage? A Hyundai Sonata, which starts at $19,995.

"I don't feel any better driving a Cadillac than a Sonata. A car's a car. It's the truth."

StreetBeat appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

pwilson@thespec.com 905-526-3391