Ben Stepman Hyundai Henderson commercial playing on a 1990s console TV in a wood-paneled living room

In Henderson, Of Course: The Las Vegas Commercial Lines Locals Still Know

October 8, 2026Brad Goldberg

Say "Henderson" to someone who has lived here long enough and watch their mouth. Some of them will add "of course" before they can stop it.

That is a car dealer's doing. Ben Stepman has been gone since 1999 and he is still finishing our sentences.

This town was full of commercials like his. Local owners, local airtime, and one line at the end that you could not get out of your head. Nobody sang. Nobody needed to.

Ben Stepman: In Henderson, of course

Stepman came to town in 1976 with his wife, Billie, and opened a Dodge dealership at 460 North Boulder Highway. His first slogan pitched him as the other Dodge dealer in town. "We started with the phrase, 'We're the other Dodge dealer,' and that really took off," he told the Las Vegas Sun in 1994. Yugo and Hyundai stores came later.

The line that stuck came to him in his small office at the dealership. Two words, tacked onto the name of the town.

In Henderson, of course.

He said it to the camera with a broad smile, arms out, palms up. Hyundai named his store the top dealer in the West for customer satisfaction every year from 1994 through 1998. "Ben was always straight up with all the customers," his general manager said when he died, in April 1999.

Henderson kept the line.

GMF Motors: If I can finance him

Over on the east side, Fred Fayeghi was making a different promise. He came here from Iran in 1976, and his GMF Motors commercials started running in 1985. Every one of them carried the same line.

"If I can finance him, and I will, then I can finance you!"

Man in a gray suit pointing at the camera on the GMF Motors car lot in an early 1990s Las Vegas TV commercial

From a GMF Motors commercial, early 1990s.

The "him" could be anybody. One spot offered to finance a hitchhiker trying to catch a ride near the lot. The "you" was whoever was watching. That finger is pointed at you. It was a pitch to everyone a bank had already turned down.

The Review-Journal ranked GMF's spots the worst local commercials in town, year after year. In 2016 the same paper put the line on a list of commercials you have definitely seen if you live in Las Vegas. Both were true. The lot is closed now.

J&J: The King of Beepers

And then there was JJ.

If you lived here in the beeper years, you heard him. He was almost all radio, and when he did go up on a billboard, it said exactly what the radio said.

J&J The King of Beepers billboard from the 1990s with JJ in a crown and robe saying I'm JJ, I'm the owner, I'm the King of beepers

A J&J billboard, 1990s.

"I'm JJ, I'm the owner, I'm the King of beepers!"

J&J had shops from Southern California to Las Vegas, selling pagers and cell phones. A beeper on your belt meant somebody could reach you, and back then that was worth paying for. Then cell phones took the whole pager business with them.

Nobody sang any of it. Three businesses told you who they were, then repeated one line until the whole valley knew it.

Stepman is gone. The GMF lot is closed. Your beeper is in a drawer somewhere, or a landfill.

The lines stayed. Say Henderson to a Local and see what happens.