The Dealership That Never Needed a Platform: The Comprehensive History of Till's Garage Chevrolet in Bellevue, Iowa, 112 Years Later

I was working on a new competitive map in our system when I noticed a dealer with no Core Web Vitals score at all. That usually means a site doesn't get enough real-world Chrome traffic for Google to publish one, so my first thought was small volume, nothing to see here.

But it always makes me curious what kind of dealer doesn't register.

That's how I found Till Chevrolet in Bellevue, Iowa.

I pulled up the website expecting the usual gaps. What I found was a custom site built by a local Dubuque web shop, The Stevens Company. No dealer platform. No franchise template. Two Iowa businesses doing things their own way.

I had to stop and take it in. We are surrounded by AI agents constantly optimizing, streamlining and maximizing everything they touch. Meanwhile this site just sits there, plainly itself, and I found it beautiful. So I went looking for the story behind it.

A newspaper ad in March 1914

On March 10, 1914, the Bellevue Herald ran a front page ad announcing that Joseph J. Till had secured the local agency for four makes of car: Imperial, Buick, Ford and Studebaker. Buyers were told to order early, because there was “sure to be a great demand for cars.” Several dealerships opened in Jackson County that same spring, and Till's is the one still standing. The Iowa Automobile Dealers Association lists Till's among its 100-year dealerships.

The shop began on the corner of South Second and Court Street, where Ploessl Construction operates today. Since 1943 the dealership has been at 132 North Second Street.

Father, son, grandson

Joseph's son Wilfred started working alongside him in 1925 at the age of 15 and bought the business in 1934. That was the same year his son Ardell was born, known to everyone as Bud. Bud graduated from St. Joseph High School in 1952 and went to work for his father as a mechanic. On January 3, 1973 he became co-owner of Till's Garage. Much of this history comes from a 2022 Bellevue Herald-Leader feature on the family and the dealership.

A century of nameplates

The brands on the lot tell the history of the industry. Buicks from 1914 to 1934. Hudsons from 1938 to 1948. Pontiacs from 1948 into the 1990s. Studebakers from 1958 to 1968. Hudson, Studebaker and Pontiac have all since disappeared. Till's is still here, selling Chevrolets and Buicks.

The 1931 Pontiac

Wilfred, known as Wolfie, bought a 1931 Pontiac in 1957. Bud and a friend, Bill Brandt, restored and painted it the following year, and it was driven in parades for decades. In January 2022, with supply chain shortages leaving the new car showroom thin, the family rolled the old Pontiac out of storage and parked it on the floor. It turned a lot of heads.

Bud

Bud was the Chevrolet dealer-operator for 40 years and the Buick dealer-operator for 50. In 1990 he was inducted into an Iowa auto industry hall of fame. He also spent more than 20 years with the Bellevue Fire Department, helped with the town's Fourth of July Heritage Days, and sang in the church choir. He died on June 30, 2025, at 91, surrounded by his family, and the Bellevue Fire Department held a walk-through at his visitation. His obituary tells the rest of that story better than I can.

Today

The family counts five generations on its own website, and you can follow the dealership on Facebook.

The shop behind the site

The website credits The Stevens Company, a web design and programming firm on Asbury Road in Dubuque, a short drive up the Mississippi from Bellevue. According to its own site, it has been in business since 1988. It builds custom websites and handles hosting, ecommerce, SEO, reputation management and ADA compliance programming, and its portfolio reads like a map of the tri-state area: excavating contractors, a brewery, a boat store, a campground, and a century-old car dealership. In an industry where nearly every store runs on a handful of national platforms, there is something great about a family dealer and a local web shop that have kept it between neighbors.

What the website says

Back to where this started. The site shows real photos of real cars on the lot, MSRP and price side by side, and “5 Generations Since 1914” under the logo. There is nothing on it that a measurement tool can score, and the dealership still holds 4.9 stars across 53 Google reviews. A business can be loved without being measured, and a century of trust doesn't show up in a Lighthouse report.

I've never been to Bellevue or met the Tills, but I would love to sit down with them for a coffee someday.

Sources: Bellevue Herald-Leader, “On the Showroom Floor” (Jan. 19, 2022); obituary of Ardell “Bud” Till, Hachmann-Mier Funeral Home; Iowa Automobile Dealers Association milestone anniversaries; tillsauto.com; thestevenscompany.com.