Victory Auto Wreckers and its low-budget, long-running TV commercial have finally reached the end of the road
When Victory Auto Wreckers tows and crushes its last clunker this month after nearly 80 years in business, it will mark the end — thankfully for some — of perhaps the longest-running commercial in the history of Chicago television.
For nearly 40 years, the low-budget Victory spot has aired more than a half million times, searing its grainy images and simple “that old car is worth money” tagline into the collective unconscious of a city. After Saturday, however, the family-owned auto salvage yard in Bensenville near O’Hare will no longer pay “cash on the spot” for your beater.
Facing a challenging salvage market, rising interest rates and a dearth of do-it-yourselfers ready to scour a 9-acre junkyard for parts, Kyle Weisner, 54, the third-generation owner of Victory Auto Wreckers, will be the last in his family’s towing line as he heads for semi-retirement in Arizona.
“The plan is to close up the yard completely by the end of the year,” Weisner said. “Hopefully, we’re able to make a deal with somebody to buy the property.”
The imminent Victory closing means the end of the road for a Chicago TV spot that now takes its place in the pantheon of bygone commercials so bad they were good, right next to Bert Weinman “Your TV Ford Man” and the Eagle Insurance man/bird.
Filmed in two hours in 1985, the Victory commercial features a shaggy dude opening the door to his car, only to have it fall off. Exasperated, he calls Victory, which pays him cash and tows it away. The owner grabs the money sporting a very wide 1970s-era leather watchband, a slice of Chicago cinema verite that somehow made the commercial both dated and timeless from the outset.
Bob Zajdel, 63, of Villa Park, then a Victory tow truck driver, made his star turn in the commercial, establishing an enduring if somewhat below-the-radar fame in Chicago among generations of TV viewers. While the commercial has aired hundreds of thousands of times over the decades, his role paid less than the three $20s his fictional character got in the spot.
“I got two hours of pay because I was working for them,” said Zajdel, who now drives an eighteen-wheeler for a Bensenville-based regional trucking firm.
The cattle call was issued by Weisner’s father, who was looking to replace Victory’s similar first TV spot, which had physically deteriorated after a few years and many plays in the early ‘80s on Chicago TV stations. Zajdel, then a wiry 25-year-old, had the right look and was recruited for what turned out to be the role of a lifetime, Weisner said.
Victory towed the green early 1970s Chevy Impala to a residential street in Bensenville about three blocks from the junkyard. Zajdel loosened the door bolts so it would fall off when he opened it. The door nearly hit him on the foot, which likely helped his method acting.
“It missed, but it was close,” he said.
It took two hours from prepping the car to wrapping the filming, which was completed in only two takes. Then they towed the car back to the yard, Zajdel jumped into another truck and went back to his day job.
Somehow, his 15 minutes of fame lasted 38 years.
During its heyday, the spot aired as many as 50 times a day across local Chicago TV stations, Weisner said. It ran with only minor changes for 30 years, airing more than 500,000 times, by conservative estimates.
Longtime WGN-TV announcer Dean Richards did the voice-over beginning in 1991, updating the read to include the new 630 area code in 1996. And at one point, the tagline was changed from “that old car is worth money” to “that old car might be worth money” during a downturn in the salvage industry, reverting to the more definitive promise when the market rebounded, Weisner said.
In 2015, Weisner decided the original spot had finally run its course, prompted in part by disparaging calls fielded by Victory after almost every late-night airing, he said.
“We had an answering machine that would pick up the overnight calls, thinking that we would get people who wanted to junk their car, or inquire about a part,” Weisner said. “And inevitably, every morning we’d come in, and there’d be 10 to 30 messages. And most of them were, ‘get rid of that commercial.’”
Taking a cue from Empire Carpet, which had switched to an animated version of its longtime spokesman, Elmer Lynn Hauldren, prior to his death in 2011, Weisner decided to update the Victory spot as a cartoon.
The new TV spot paid homage to its predecessor, animating the oft-repeated scene of a car door falling off a clunker in the hands of its shaggy-haired owner. They also added a jingle. And a dinosaur. But the TV-viewing public didn’t buy it, generating even more late-night calls asking Victory to bring back the original spot, Weisner said.
After a few years of mounting pressure, Weisner relented and created a mashup that included original footage from the 1985 commercial seguing into the cartoon version.
In recent years, the commercial has aired in a number of prime-time sports broadcasts, including a 15-second spot that slipped into a local avail during Super Bowl LIV in February 2020 on Fox. That one airing cost Victory $85,000, Weisner said, but also included 250 free spots that ran on WFLD-Ch. 32 that spring, as Chicagoans were glued to their TV sets at the onset of the pandemic lockdown.
The frequency of the spots waned more recently amid a softening auto salvage market. Falling metal prices this year have reduced the value of catalytic converters and other parts, accelerating the downward trend, Weisner said.
In August, Victory pulled its commercials off all local TV in an effort to salvage the business, Weisner said.
Victory launched in 1945. Weisner’s grandfather and father bought it in 1967. Under his watch, Weisner invested more than $4 million to pave the 8.8-acre property in 2014. The land has since become more valuable than the business, he said.
Weisner, who now lives in Arizona, said his kids moved West to pursue careers in the entertainment industry. Without a fourth generation to take over the family business, closing it was the most viable option.
“In order to get past the challenges we have right now, it requires boots on the ground,” Weisner said. “I don’t have it in me anymore.”
For Zajdel, the end of Victory, and his long-running spot, is bittersweet.
While Zajdel and his co-star — an unseen tow truck driver who doles out the cash and drives off with the junker — both signed a waiver allowing Victory to run the commercial in perpetuity with no further compensation due the actors, there have been some residual benefits.
In some circles, Zajdel’s fame precedes him, and he is greeted as a minor celebrity.
“I don’t have to tell anybody,” Zajdel said. “Anybody who knows me ends up spreading the word. They know I’m the Victory guy.”
Zajdel, who remains trim and long-haired, said the blue T-shirt he wore in the commercial has been hanging in the closet for 30-plus years, and it still fits. He knows because he donned it for a recent TV appearance commemorating the end of the commercial’s long run. Zajdel also pulled the wide leather watchband out of his dresser for the occasion.
With the Victory commercial relegated to the Chicago TV graveyard, taking its place alongside faux newsboy Timmy screaming “Extra! Extra!” on behalf of Long Chevrolet and the cheery Lincoln Carpeting jingle (call National 2-9000), the thought of fading fame does not weigh heavily on Zajdel.
“It’s not something that went to my head,” he said. “It’s just one of those things that — it is what it is. I had fun with it.”
