[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I remember seeing his commercials on cable TV in New Mexico back in 1973. What a hoot!

I had a friend from Los Angeles who said Worthington was a real shyster when it came to selling cars.

There was a movie about 1974, FREEBE AND THE BEAN in which there is one scene in which you can hear in the background “Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal”.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071521/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

I remember him walking his pig, various other animals, even saw him do some wing walking on an airplane. But he DID NOT walk the lion he had on the set once. It was still caged while the “Go see Cal” theme played. He may have been a shyster but he was no dummy!

[Finny]

If Cal Worthington was such a shyster, how did he stay in business for as long as he did?

I kinda have a hunch that ol' Cal provided cheap, decent wheels for generations of people, repeat customers, referrals, year after year, decade after decade. Fly-by-night operations are the only venues in which shysters can survive. Cal Worthington's was the opposite of a fly-by-night operation. On the contrary, it probably outlasted 90 percent of its competitors over the decades. Stability and consistency are hardly the marks of "real shysters."