Spur Oil: its Nashville heritage and German stock

The front page of the Journal contains a story about several national companies whose ownership is tied up in the courts because a large block of its stock was owned by Germans during the Second World War. Those assets included stock in about 500 companies, including the Quaker State Metal Products Corp. One of the most valuable blocks, the article explains, is 55 percent of the stock in Spur Oil Company of Nashville, Tennessee.

A man named Mason Houghland started Spur as a single gas station in Old Hickory, Tennessee in 1928. A few years later, Wilhelm von Opel, a founder of Germany's Opel Motor Works, invested in Houghland's business. By 1940, Spur had grown into a chain of service stations backed by a formidable distribution network.