A 26-foot statue of a Native American chief that had been a San Antonio landmark because the Nineteen Sixties was felled by Hyundai’s dealership requirements.

The statue got here down in July as a part of a reconstruction challenge at Pink McCombs Superior Hyundai.

“This can be a piece of historical past that’s actually distinctive however isn’t a part of the Hyundai expertise,” Peter Brodnitz, McCombs Enterprises’ vice chairman of promoting, instructed the San Antonio Categorical-Information.

The statue initially was erected at a Pontiac dealership close to downtown San Antonio that marketed itself as “Residence of the Massive Chief.” The shop and its fiberglass mascot moved to a website overlooking the town’s Interstate 410 freeway loop in 1977.

McCombs inherited the statue when it purchased the dealership in 1989. Its removing occurred 5 months after firm founder Pink McCombs died at age 95.

Brodnitz instructed the Categorical-Information that the group was looking for a brand new house for the statue, which the shop wearing an enormous San Antonio Spurs jersey when the crew made the NBA playoffs.

“It’s the finish of an period,” he stated. “We’re bummed about it.”

The statue was criticized by some as culturally insensitive, although Ramon Vasquez, govt director of American Indians in Texas on the Spanish Colonial Missions in San Antonio, instructed the Categorical-Information in 2019 that he had “no dangerous blood” with the McCombs household over it.