Ernie Boch, Jr. Biography

Ernie Boch, Jr., born in 1958, is the CEO, president, and spokesman of Boch Enterprises, a $1 billion business consisting primarily of automobile dealerships in Norwood, Massachusetts. Boch is a local celebrity in the Greater Boston area who has a passion for music, makes television cameos, and has a creative approach to advertising and selling cars.

Ernie Boch

Ernie Boch, Jr. inherited the automobile sales and service business started by his grandfather, Andrew Boch, who began the family business in 1945 by purchasing a Nash Motors franchise in Norwood, Massachusetts.

Andrew's son, Ernie Boch Sr., built the Norwood operation into the top ranked Rambler dealer in the country by the early 1960s. This was accomplished on the strength of his drive and often "outlandish" television commercials with the catch phrase for anyone shown a new or used car without a Boch mini-sticker in the window: "ask for the keys it's your car, my name is Ernie Boch." Later, Boch began using the National Airlines tag "Come on down!" which the airline used to promote travel to Florida before its merger with Pan American World Airways. Ernie Boch, Jr,'s father is also largely credited with bringing the "Automile" concept to U.S. Route 1 in Norwood. With this concept, a large cluster of competing automobile dealerships join together to publicize the "Automile" as an automobile shopping center. Shortly after the death of Ernie Boch Sr., Boch Jr. appeared in a television commercial paying tribute to his father. Boch Jr. was in a car, watching images from an old commercial featuring his father, in the rear view mirror. Boch Jr. smiled and drove away.

Ernie Jr.'s first car was a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle, British racing green. He bought it in 1974, when he was 16, from the used-car department at his family's Toyota dealership.

His father, Ernie Boch, Sr., received some criticism from the Boston Brahmin culture and other elements of the upper class as a member of the nouveau riche of the region.

Philanthropy

Boch founded in 2005 "Music Drives Us", a regional project supporting music in New England. Its three focuses are music preservation, music education, and music awareness.

Other ventures

Boch has formed a band, Ernie and the Automatics. Ernie and the Automatics album Low Expectations was on Billboard's Top Blues Album chart for six weeks, debuting at #7. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, and formerly sat on the college's Board of Trustees.

Boch appeared on the locally produced restaurant review show, The Phantom Gourmet. On September 8, 2007 he was a guest judge for the cleavage contest at King Richard's Faire, along with drummer Sib Hashian. He appeared on WLVI-TV's Creature Double Feature playing "The Ghoul".

Boch has appeared in three episodes of the television show Rescue Me, "Black," "Animal" and "Satisfaction" as Captain Bernard, the coach of the NYPD hockey team.

Boch also owns the Boston-based women's tackle football team, the Boston Militia.

Controversy

Women in automobile sales

In a 2003 interview with The Boston Globe, in response to the question, "Why don't more women sell cars?" Boch responded, "They don't apply. They're intimidated by the industry. It's totally male-dominated." This was perceived by at least one scholar of gender studies - Harvey Mansfield, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, and former holder of the Guggenheim Fellowship and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships - to be a sexist remark. Dr. Mansfield referred to this quote as "a totally male interpretation of a kind rarely printed in the newspapers today."

2009 bounty

In late 2009 a blogger of the web site bluemassgroup.com writing under the pseudonym "Ernie Boch III" (Boch has two children, neither of them named Ernie Boch III) called for a boycott of companies running advertising during the Boston region political talk radio program The Howie Carr Show.

After contact with some of the advertisers, as a guest on an October 3 episode of The Howie Carr Show Ernie Boch, Jr. offered a $2,000 bounty to any individual who would reveal the identity of the blogger, saying to the show's host, "I'm going to tell you who he is so you can terrorize him every afternoon."