A Tale of Cars from Mardin

Sakıp Sabancı Mardin Kent Müzesi, Gül Mahallesi 1. Cadde Cumhuriyet Alanı, 47100 Mardin

By the 1950s, cars imported from the USA and Europe were being purchased all over Turkey, particularly n the major cities. One of the first foreign car brands in Mardin was the Kaiser-Frazer of Michigan. However, this car with its low-lying chassis was not suitable for Mardin’s pitted, bumpy dirt roads, and Chevrolet and Ford models soon replaced the Kaiser-Frazers.

Freighters from the USA brought the cars to the port of Iskenderun where their owners would be waiting. Iskenderun was the gateway to the world for Adana, Gaziantep, Diyarbakır, Mardin, the other provinces of south east Turkey as well as the Middle East, Syria, Iraq and Iran.