CROWN POINT | Stripped of gleaming new autos, the former Carroll Chevrolet showroom holds the remnants of a once-thriving business.

The desks where dozens of sales were consummated sit scattered near a battalion of file cabinets where customer information was stored.

They, along with auto repair equipment, banks of computers and stray pieces of office furniture, among many other items, all will go on the auction block on Wednesday.

Auctioneer Grafe Auction Company plans to start at 10:30 a.m. selling the lot, including a 2009 Corvette and a nine-ton hoist, to the highest bidder.

It will be a bittersweet day, said Georgette Fairchild, the final owner of a dealership that got its start when her grandfather William F. Carroll opened a Ford showroom in 1921 in the city's downtown.

Carroll scrapped the Fords in favor of Chevys and moved the dealership to the north side of town in 1964, when the main drag was still a two-lane road and the sales jingle, "See the USA in your Chevrolet," lingered on the airwaves.

Carroll Chevrolet closed in October, the victim Fairchild said of General Motors' decision to withdraw support from some of its dealerships in the aftermath of the automaker's bankruptcy.

Without a GM supplied new-car inventory, the 30,000-square foot building proved "too large a place to go forward in," Fairchild said.

Plans are to sell the property, on 16 acres at 1800 N. Main St., Fairchild said.

Not everything in the building will go on the auction block.

Fairchild earlier this week sorted through photos and mementos, finding a glass ashtray bearing the company's early logo and a framed award to an employee who'd racked up 30 years on the job.

Fifty people lost jobs when the dealership closed, something Fairchild still has difficulty talking about.

"The people who worked here were like family to me," she said.