Jim Kennedy’s Car Collection

In early 1997, a real estate agent in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, was in search of a new vehicle. Because her work required transporting clients on house-hunting excursions and carting signs and brochures to open houses, she favored a minivan. A chance road trip with her brother in his Plymouth Voyager persuaded her to check out that option. Her search led her to Pensacola Chrysler Plymouth, about an hour's drive from her home, because that dealership had the best selection in the area. She collected her new chariot on April 25, 1997.

Pensacola Chrysler Plymouth traced its roots back to sometime before 1967, when the owner of several automobile dealerships, Fred O. Drake, Jr., purchased the Pensacola dealership. Starting in 1956 with a single dealership in Tallahassee—Capitol Plymouth—Drake (with his partner, Charles “Ed” Brown) eventually assembled a collection of five Chrysler-Plymouth outlets in Florida, all rebranded under the Fred Drake name. Declining health resulted in his selling those dealerships back to the Chrysler Corporation in 1977; at that time, the Pensacola franchise was renamed Gulf Coast Chrysler Plymouth. Several months later, Wallace “Wally” Cassiano, who had previously managed one of the Drake operations, purchased part-ownership of the Pensacola dealership and changed its name back to Pensacola Chrysler Plymouth. Mr. Cassiano later acquired full ownership. By the time this Voyager was purchased in 1997, Wally Cassiano had retired, turning management over to his son, James “Jimmy” Cassiano. After the deaths of Jimmy Cassiano in 1999, and his wife in 2001, the Cassiano family sold the dealership to Sandy Sansing, owner of several local auto dealerships. Mr. Sansing operated the business until the spring of 2009, when his dealer agreement was terminated as part of the Chrysler LLC Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Wally Cassiano died in 2004.