CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Del Spitzer, the crewcut salesman whose TV commercials made him a household figure in Northeast Ohio in the 1960s and helped build a pioneering auto sales business into one of the largest dealer groups in the world, died May 2 in Dallas, Texas. He was 86.

He and his wife, Anne, settled in Dallas after he retired in 1998. They also had homes in Florida, California and Ohio.

During his time leading auto operations, Spitzer Management expanded to 30 dealerships in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. While cars remained its core, holdings of the Elyria-based, family-owned business extended to real estate, oil and gas, brokerages, a golf course, marinas, farms and more.

Known for ads that featured his gap-toothed grin and declaration that "I want to sell YOU a car now!," Spitzer was associated with auto sales from the time he was born, in Grafton in Lorain County.

After his parents, George and Harriet, started a hardware store and livery business there in 1904, George began selling Model T Fords on the side. Reputed to be the first car dealer in Ohio, he wanted Del, the second of four sons, to be named Ford A. Spitzer, for the new Model A, according to family history.

The baby instead was christened Frank Adelbert, for Adelbert Road, where George and Harriet met attending Western Reserve University.

But if young Del didn't bear the name his father favored, he did carry the family's industrial-strength work ethic. By the time he was 10, he was going door-to-door in Grafton to sell tack-on numbers for mailboxes.

It was standard procedure, he remembered, for the children to begin working after school when they were 12 years old.

Del took charge of sales at the family's car dealership at age 18, during the summer after he graduated from Grafton High School, when his father died and his brothers were in the armed forces.

He graduated with honors from Baldwin-Wallace College in 1951 while working full-time, and then earned an MBA from what is now Case Western Reserve University, still working full-time in the car business and also running the family's dairy farm.

By the 1960s, the Spitzer name also was linked to land development, building supplies and finance, auto leasing and natural gas. At one point in the early '60s, they reportedly sold more cars than any other dealer in the world.

Del worked 75 hours a week, but never on Sunday. "It was really my only time to spend with the kids," he recalled in an interview.

Spitzer's automotive sales techniques became so successful that Ford featured the family's "10-point sales plan" in a training film as a model for the manufacturer's other dealers. Their Cleveland store was Ford's largest-volume outlet in Ohio.

The family's sales innovations included selling multiple lines at a time when most dealers sold a single brand. Del's brother John was hailed as the "world's largest Dodge dealer," and Del would become president of the Chrysler Dealers Advisory Board, lobbying with chairman Lee Iacocca in 1979 to save the ailing corporation.

Spitzer became so familiar to Clevelanders through the TV spots saturating local airwaves that the late gossip columnist Mary Strassmeyer jokingly accused of him wearing a wig after he grew out his trademark crewcut.

His son, Donn, was only about 9 when he joined him on commercials -- in a matching crewcut. Donn would declare, "My dad wants to sell YOU a car now!"

Spitzer's interest in cars extended beyond business. He built a collection of classic cars that included one driven by Eliot Ness. At the 2000 Greater Cleveland International Auto Show benefit, Spitzer bid on, and won, a 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark 2, for $14,000.

In 1951, he graduated from B-W, where he played trumpet. In 2005, he donated $200,000 to the college to help restart the marching band. The school had not fielded one since 1971.

He served on boards including those of B-W, First Merit Bank and the Boy Scouts of America.

In addition to his wife and son, survivors include two daughters, Mary Martin and Dianne Hobbs, and seven grandchildren. His nephew Alan is chairman and chief executive of Spitzer Management Inc.

Private services were held in Dallas.