The recent passing of long-time Highland Park resident and business icon Seymour Kamp got us thinking back to a wonderful article his son, David, wrote for the November 2005 issue of GQ magazine.

 

Many of you well remember "Mr. Buick," as Seymour was known for miles around the storied showroom of DeAngelis Buick in New Brunswick. Kamp was named DeAngelis's sales manager in 1957. 

 

In chronicling his father's life, David Kamp harks back to “an era of gleaming whitewalls and boattail Rivieras.”

 

Seymour M. Kamp, who had been a resident of Highland Park for 41 years, died Feb. 2 at age 77 after a brief illness. 

 

For the WCTC-AM morning-drive man Jack Ellery, who describes Seymour Kamp as one of Central New Jersey’s all-time merchant-celebrities. Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, Kamp was known across the mid-state region as “Mr. Buick,” not least because he took to the airwaves of WCTC with his machine-gun commercial delivery. (Think of him as the antithesis of Tom Carvel.)

 

These radio commercials helped make DeAngelis Buick a legendary automobile dealership.

 

David Kamp writes that his father’s charisma and integrity made him a local hero. “I reveled in being the son of Mr. Buick….It wasn’t even so much that his customers admired his honesty (though he was honest, and cringed at TV portrayals of loud-jacketed sleazy car salesmen) as they valued his friendship and company.”

 

His dad, he says, “kept in touch after the sale, making house calls when [his customers’]  cars wouldn’t start, dropping everything to hurry over with the jumper cables he always kept in his trunk.”

 

David writes that Seymour Kamp’s “twin faiths—to community and brand—conspired to make Mr. Buick the consummate local salesman, a trusted neighborhood vendor like your greengrocer, butcher, or dry cleaner, except his goods weighed two tons apiece and arrived on a trailer from Flint, Michigan.”

 

The article features a photo of father and son on the steps of their home in Highland Park.

 

To read the full article at David Kamp's website, click here.