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Cerritos Auto Square

Cluster of automobile dealerships located in Cerritos, California, USA

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 16, 2025
Entity authorityQ5064828 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Cerritos Auto Square is an automobile retail center located in the city of Cerritos, California; it can be reached by taking 605 to South Street. Cerritos Auto Square states that it is the largest auto mall in the world with 29 import and domestic marques.

History

In 1979, the Cerritos Redevelopment Agency began work on the improvement of Studebaker Road, and in October of that year, S & J Chevrolet broke ground for the first auto dealership in the Cerritos Auto Square, directly west of Interstate 605 and the Los Cerritos Center, between 183rd and South streets. Eventually it would be joined by other dealerships in buildings that featured a distinctive "New Orleans" style.[1]

One of the first business locations in Cerritos was the General Telephone Company's service yard, replacing a turkey ranch on the northwest corner of Studebaker Road and 183rd Street. In 1988, the Los Cerritos Redevelopment Agency purchased the 8.5 acres (34,000 m2) and made $1.2 million in improvements, including road improvements, landscaped medians and parkways, rocky waterfalls, and decorative street lights. The site was soon the new home of Moothart Chrysler-Plymouth and Victory Pontiac-GMC. A few years later, a Saturn dealer was added to make twenty-two dealer franchises in the Cerritos Auto Square.[2] It started in 1995

Today, the Cerritos Auto Square provides the city of Cerritos with approximately $12 million a year in sales tax, and is its single largest source of revenue. In 2006, the Auto Square sold 48,241 automobiles, totaling over $1.1 billion in sales, or half of the total retail sales in the city.[3]

Marketing

The Cerritos Auto Square has an aggressive marketing campaign throughout Southern California. The Cerritos Auto Square Association advertises collectively via radio, television, and signage, as well as individual dealership advertisements through similar media.

Radio

The various advertisements heard throughout Southern California radio is perhaps the most widespread example of the Auto Square's collective advertising. Although no one dealership receives extra air time, the advertisements generally proclaim the low prices, sales, and reputation of the auto mall as the highest volume dealer.

Editorial summary

“Cerritos Auto Square” enters the record as cluster of automobile dealerships located in Cerritos, California, USA. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cerritos, Auto and Square can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1979, 1988, 1995, 2006—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1979. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Cerritos, Auto and Square.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Cerritos Auto Square” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cerritos, Auto and Square provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5064828. Authority coordinates are 33.862, -118.102. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1988, 1995 and 2006.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Cerritos Auto Square primary sources, Cerritos Auto Square archive and Cerritos research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cerritos Auto Square” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.