Ernie Boch Dies at 76-This Day In Norwood History-July 15, 2003

Ernie Boch, 76, the P. T. Barnum of Greater Boston auto dealers, died of liver cancer Sunday at his home in Edgartown.

For decades, Mr. Boch appeared in his own television advertisements, low-budget affairs in which he gleefully leaped out of trunks and smashed windshields to draw attention to his dealership on Route 1 in Norwood.

“Come on down,” he repeated time after time to attract customers to his pennant-lined lot in the suburbs.

“He was an icon, a real trend-setter who was doing his own kind of personal branding before it was popularly done,” David Williams, executive vice president of the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association, said yesterday. “He was one of the most successful people in our business ever.”

The ads often aired during the 6 o’clock news. In one that ran repeatedly when the news hour was filled with reports on Black Panthers, miniskirts, and the Vietnam War, the camera panned across the shiny body of a Dodge Polarismand showed the sticker price on the rear window. Suddenly an object smashed through the window. And there was Ernie Boch holding a hammer and screaming: “Nobody! Nobody smashes prices on new 1966 Dodge Ramblers and used cars like Boch, and don’t forget it. I don’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve been offered. I challenge, yes, challenge, any dealer anywhere to match our sticker-smashing prices on any 1966 Dodge, Rambler, or Boch service-conditioned used cars.”

“Says who? Says I, Ernie Boch,”he concluded in another of his signature lines.

It wasn’t art but commerce that motivated Mr. Boch. “They certainly weren’t the most sophisticated commercials, but they did the job they were intended to do,” he told the Boston Phoenix in 1983. “Any time you smash things, people are bound to be interested”.

The ads worked. Mr. Boch claimed to have sold 32,000 cars in 1998 alone.

Mr. Boch was a second-generation auto dealer. His father, Andrew B., owned a Nash agency on Route 1 in Norwood.

After graduating from Norwood High School in 1946, Mr. Boch spent two years in the Army, then worked in shoe factories in New Hampshire for a few years, where he said he enjoyed the piecework pay rate.

“I liked the competition,” hebsaid in a Globe story in 1999.

He returned to Norwood to run the family business when his father became ill. “I came back working in the parts department,” he said. “I ordered all the wrong parts. I worked pumping gas. I didn’t care for that. I was doing some bookkeeping. It was kind of boring.”

One afternoon when his father was at the bank, a customer came in and Mr. Boch sold his first car — “I had no choice,” Mr. Boch said — and an icon was born.

Within days, Mr. Boch took out a quarter-page ad in the Sunday Globe that established his style. It depicted Ernie Boch standing over a dynamite plunger detonating a
‘bigger competitor.

In addition to a string of auto dealerships on Route 1’s “Auto Mile” — which Mr. Boch helped create and market — he owned a Subaru distributorship and several radio stations on Cape Cod.

Through his donations, the Boch Center for the Performing Arts was established in Mashpee.

Several years ago, Mr. Boch’s son Ernie Jr. estimated that his father was worth about half a billion dollars.

He wasn’t shy about spending it. In 1985, Mr. Boch built a $10 million, 15,000 square foot house — technically an addition to an ex- isting house on Edgartown Harbor on Martha’s Vineyard. It has 245 windows, 85 skylights, 14 television sets, three kitchens, and a $1 million granite driveway on ‘which Mr. Boch would jog past his pet donkey and two llamas.

Though he traveled to the is- land on his private jet and sported gold cuff links encrusted with diamonds, Mr. Boch was a man who still wanted to make a fast buck. He rented out moorings at his home and successfully sued the town when it tried to stop the practice.

Last year, when auto dealers Jim Carney and Herb Chambers rented a mooring, Mr. Boch rowed out to collect the fee.

“Here is a guy who is incredibly wealthy coming out there in a rubber boat to collect 50 bucks. It’s kind of crazy,” Chambers told the Globe earlier this year.

Mr. Boch disputed the account. “It was $40,” he said.

In addition to his son Ernie Jr. of Norwood, Mr. Boch leaves his wife, Barbara (Lyons); five daughters, Beth Joyce of San Diego, Donna Frangiosa of Norwood, Karen Clemmey of Wrentham, Tina Boch of California, and Pamela Buzzell of Lakeville; a son, Dale of Chestnut Hill; his mother, Ida of Norwood; a brother, Richard of Vermont; a sister, Laura Frazier of Norwood; and several grandchildren.

Funeral services are private.