If you’ve watched any NCAA basketball tournament games on television in recent days, you might have spotted the Route 66 landmark Roy’s gas station, cafe and motel in Amboy, California, in a Nissan ad.
The Roy’s footage, which features the Nissan Z sports car, begins about the 15-second mark;
I went back more than a year of the Facebook page for Roy’s and didn’t find any reference to a Nissan shoot there. I reckon for contractural reasons, the folks at Roy’s kept quiet about it at the time.
Albert Okura of the Juan Pollo restaurant chain bought the entire town of Amboy in 2005. Roy’s cafe building reopened as a convenience store, and the gasoline pumps work after being idle for many years.
Kyle Okura, Albert’s son, said his father plans to eventually reopen the cafe and the six motel cottages that line Route 66.
Roy’s in Amboy opened in 1938 through owner Roy Crowl. But the most well-known owner of Roy’s was Buster Burris. By the late 1940s, Roy’s garage, motel and restaurant were open 24 hours a day to serve Route 66 travelers.
The property’s business declined after the opening of Interstate 40, and Burris retired in 1995. He died in 2000.
(Screen-capture image from Nissan commercial of Roy’s in Amboy, California)