HISTORIC CAR BRANDS

Crosley was a small, independent manufacturer of equally small economy cars in the USA, between 1939 and 1952, and was responsible for the introduction of the USA’s first series-production overhead-camshaft small car and the first with four-wheel disc brakes.

Edoardo Bianchi founded what is the world’s oldest bicycle manufacturing company in Italy, in 1885 and expanded into producing motorcycles from 1897 and cars from 1900. In 1955 the joint-venture Autobianchi brand was created, with Fiat and Pirelli, to manufacture cars and Autobianchi was subsequently sold to Fiat in 1969.

The FN, Fabrique Nationale, company was established in Herstal, Belgium, in 1889, to produce rifles for the Belgian Army. FN subsequently diversified into producing cars, motorcycles and trucks.

Lotus Cars was founded in 1952 by engineers Colin Chapman and Colin Dare and owned for many years by Colin Chapman. After his death in 1982 and a period of financial instability, Lotus passed through different hands and is currently owned by Chinese multinational Geely, with Etika Automotive as an equity partner.

Friedrich (Fred) and August (Augie) Duesenberg came to the USA when they were small children. Both were self-taught engineers, who began making Duesenberg-branded engine and racing cars in Minnesota, in 1913. Their cars were hand made and considered class-leading. 

Empire is an American car series, manufactured from 1910 until 1919. An ‘assembled’ car, using proprietary components, it’s best known not for automotive innovation, but for the subsequent fame of its founders, three of whom were instrumental in building the Indianapolis Motor Speedway – the world famous ‘Brickyard’.

Brothers Richard and Alan Jensen built a boat-tailed sporting body on an early-model Austin ‘Chummy’ in 1926. Alfred Wilde, chief engineer at the Standard Motor Company was impressed with the design, to the point of asking Alan Jensen to design the first Standard Avon two-seaters that were produced between 1929 and 1933. Thus began the Jensen marque.

Kelsey was a US maker, who produced three-wheelers from 1910 and four-wheeled cars from 1919, but the company folded in 1924. Kelsey’s innovation was a very early anti-sway bar.

The Maytag-Mason Motor Company of Waterloo, Iowa, manufactured Maytag and Mason automobiles from 1910 to 1912, after taking control of the Mason Automobile Company in 1909. 

The Chandler Motor Car Company was formed in January 1913 and a subsidiary company, Cleveland Automobile Company, was established in 1919. The two officially merged in 1926 and Chandler-Cleveland was then sold to Hupmobile, months before the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

Stoewer was the third German manufacturer to produce automobiles, following Daimler and Benz. The first Stoewer, in-house produced, four-seat car was launched in 1899.

The Dort Motor Car Company of Flint, Michigan, built automobiles from 1915 until 1924. The company was founded by Josiah Dallas Dort, as a spinoff of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company.

Škoda is a Czech automobile brand that dates back to 1925. It was the renamed and refinanced endeavour of the Laurin & Klement bicycle, motorcycle, car and truck manufacturing business that had been established in Mladá Boleslav, Bohemia, in 1895.

The Summit car was produced by Sydney firm, Kelly’s Motors Ltd, from 1923 until 1925. Design and assembly was directed by William Kelly, with backing from Sir Hugh Denison, businessman and proprietor of the Sydney Sun Newspaper. However, the Kelly-Denison partnership pre-dated the Summit launch by several years.

We grouped these two former East German car brands, because both were built by the VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke and both were powered by DKW-designed two-stroke engines.

DKW, based in Zschopau, Saxony, developed steam-driven vehicles, yet ultimately became famous for its two-stroke motorcycle and car engines.

The Aero car brand was produced by a Czechoslovakian aircraft maker, owned by Dr Kabes in Prague-Vysocany, between 1929 and 1952.  From that date, Aero Vodochody produced only aircraft, well into the 21st century.

In 1972, Down Under was the only global region to have the Leyland brand on passenger cars as well as on commercial vehicles. Headed by the P76 range, the Leyland marque promised much but delivered little, thanks to a litany of self-inflicted and external influences.

Masujiro Hashimoto founded the Kaishinsha Motor Car Works in Tokyo. In 1914, the company produced its first car, called the DAT that was a combination of the investors’ surname initials.

Leslie Hounsfield’s Trojan brand has graced the bonnets of cars that range from the company’s 1914 10hp two-stroke plodder to 1970s sports racing and F1 cars.

From 1904 until 1913 the Schacht Manufacturing Company – later Schacht Motor Car Company – produced more than 8000 ‘high-wheelers’ and cars in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

The King brand was not a long-term success and is best known for the fact that its pivotal founder, Charles Brady King, in 1896, drove his prototype motor car in Detroit – the first petrol-powered vehicle to do so – and pipped Henry Ford’s Quadricycle by three months.

Cadillac was founded in 1902, named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who established Detroit, Michigan. The Cadillac crest is based on his self-designed coat of arms.

A young H F S Morgan reportedly had a motorcycle accident and sketched out a single-seat cyclecar so he could be mobile once more. The Morgan prototype three-wheeler was built with the aid of his friend’s father, William Stephenson-Peach, who was the engineering master at Malvern College.

Minerva was a Belgian automobile manufacturer from 1902 until a 1934 merger with the other major Belgian manufacturer, Impéria Automobiles. Minerva made motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses and its last product, a small 4WD, before the company closed in 1958.

Avions Voisin was a French luxury automobile brand established by Gabriel Voisin in 1919 and which traded until the early 1950s.

Veritas was a West German post World War II sports and race car company, founded in 1947 by Ernst Loof, Georg Meier and Lorenz Dietrich.

Best known for its AC and AC Cobra sports cars, the AC brand goes back to the beginnings of the British car industry and, since then, has had more stops and starts than Dame Nellie Melba or Gunsynd.

The Star Motor Company was a British car and commercial vehicle maker, started by the Lisle family and active from 1898 to 1932. At its peak Star was the UK’s sixth largest car manufacturer and produced around 1000 cars a year.

Le Zèbre was a French car badge that appeared on vehicles between 1909 and 1931. The business was associated with several pivotal designers over the years, who went on to found other brands.

Often confused with the Australian Six, with which it shared common introduction and demise dates – 1918-1926 – the Lincoln Six was the brainchild of one Charles Innes, a Scottish engineer who migrated to Australia in 1908.

De Tomaso Modena SpA – De Tomaso Automobili Ltd since 2014 – is an Italian car-manufacturing company that has had more than its fair share of ups, downs and intrigue. The company is best known for its high performance sports cars.

‘There’s something stirring in a Lincs village – at 120 mph’, ran the story line of an article in the Lincolnshire Echo, dated 12 November 1973, concerning developments at Emmbrook Engineering, of South Willingham.

In 1909, Bobby Hupp co-founded the Hupp Motor Car Company, with Charles Hastings, formerly of Oldsmobile. Emil Nelson, formerly of Oldsmobile and Packard, was chief engineer. The Hupmobile brand survived the Great Depression, but ceased production in 1939. 

The Southern Cross was an innovative Australian car design, produced between 1931 and 1935 under the chairmanship of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith by the Marks Motor Construction Company.

The double-barrelled name indicates that this famous car maker combined Swiss engineering with Spanish backing.  In 1904. Swiss engineer, Marc Birkigt, who was working in Barcelona, had already designed some early “Cuadra’ 4.5hp and 7.5hp cars, and ‘Castro’ models, before Damien Mateu stepped in and helped form La Hispano-Suiza Fabricia de Automoviles.

Lloyd Motoren Werke GmbH (Lloyd Engine Works) was a German automobile manufacturer, founded in 1908 by the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping company. Lloyd cars came to Australia in the 1950s.

Zeta is a car brand that was produced in limited numbers, from 1963 to 1965, by South Australian manufacturing company Lightburn & Co. The company should have stuck with making fibreglass boats, cement mixers and washing machines.

Isuzu Motors’ history began in 1916, when Tokyo Ishikawajima Shipbuilding and Engineering Co Ltd planned a cooperation with the Tokyo Gas and Electric Industrial Co to build automobiles. 

Railton was a marque of British-branded automobiles made by Noel Macklin’s Fairmile Engineering Company in Surrey, between 1933 and 1940. The name was revived in the late-1980s by Bill Towns, but only two cars were produced.

Alex Govan founded the Hozier Engineering Company in 1899 and produced the first Argyll Voiturette that was copied from a Renault model. It was powered by a 2¾ hp de Dion engine and had shaft-drive. Argylls were pivotal cars in the early years of Australian motoring.

The Tucker 48, often referred to as the Tucker Torpedo, was an automobile conceived by Preston Tucker while in Ypsilanti, Michigan and produced in Chicago, Illinois in 1948. 

There had been several attempts to manufacture an Australian built car during the closing years of the last decade of the 1800s – all of them watched with interest by young engineer, Harley Tarrant.

The Flanders Automobile Company was a short-lived US-American automobile manufacturer which operated in Detroit, Michigan, from 1910 to 1913. Its product was sold through Studebaker dealerships.

First came the Maxwell in 1904, followed by the Chalmers in 1908. The two brands joined forces in 1917 and, in turn, became part of Chrysler in 1923.

The roots of International Harvester run to the 1830s, when Virginia inventor Cyrus Hall McCormick perfected his version of a horse-drawn reaper, which he field-demonstrated in 1831 and for which he received a patent in 1834.

The Jordan Motor Car Company was founded in 1916 in Cleveland, Ohio by Edward S ‘Ned’ Jordan, a former sales executive from the Thomas B Jeffery Company. 

Thomas B Jeffery, an inventor and bicycle manufacturer from Chicago, first began building automobiles in the late 1890s. Moving to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1900, Jeffery began producing ‘Rambler’ automobiles – the same brand name he had used for his bicycles. 

The Purvis Eureka was produced by Purvis Cars at Dandenong in Victoria, Australia from 1974 until 1991. The VW-based sports car was a licence-built version of the UK Nova that was designed to be fitted to a VW Beetle floor pan.

in 1952, Nota Sports and Racing Cars was founded in Australia by Guy Buckingham. He was an English aircraft engineer and used his expertise to build triangulated space-framed performance cars.

Amilcar was founded in July 1921 by Joseph Lamy and Emile Akar and the name was an imperfect anagram of the partners’ names. The original Amilcar was a small cyclecar, designed by Jules Salomon and Edmond Moyet.

The Lincoln Motor Company was founded in August 1917 by Henry Leland and his son Wilfred. Leland named the company after Abraham Lincoln, stating that Lincoln was the first president for whom he ever voted, in 1864.

Buckle Motors was founded in 1927, in Sydney, by William ‘Bill’ Buckle Snr. The Sydney Northern Beaches based company is now in its third generation of family ownership.

The Stanley Motor Carriage Company was an American manufacturer of steam cars between 1902 and 1924, but the identical twin brothers Francis Edgar (F E) and Freelan Oscar (F O) had already produced more than 200 steam-powered cars of their original design in 1897-99. They then sold the manufacturing rights to Locomobile.

N H Buchanan Motor Co Pty Ltd was an Australian kit car manufacturer, who made sports car bodies and chassis in the 1950s.

Isotta Fraschini was an Italian luxury car manufacturer, which also produced trucks and marine and aviation engines. It was founded in Milan, in 1900 by Cesare Isotta and the brothers Vincenzo, Antonio, and Oreste Fraschini. 

The DMC DeLorean was a rear-engined, two-door, two-seater sports car manufactured in Ireland and marketed by the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) for the American market from 1981 to 1983. It was the only car produced by DMC.

Mitsubishi’s automotive origins date back to 1917, when the Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Co, Ltd introduced the Mitsubishi Model A, Japan’s first series-production automobile. A hand-built, seven-seater sedan, based on the Fiat Tipo 3, it proved expensive compared to imported American and European mass-produced rivals and was discontinued in 1921, after only 22 had been built.

The production of Toyota automobiles was started as a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, under the direction of the founder’s son, Kiichiro Toyoda. Its first Type A engine was a 3.4-litre copy of an American petrol six and it first powered a prototype Toyoda G-1 light truck and an A-1 sedan in 1935.

The sad story of the Wolseley brand is just another in the litany of British car company disasters. For Wolseley it was virtually all over by 1935, in what must rank as among the steepest upward and downward curves in automotive history. And it all started on the sheep’s back.

In 1908, John Willys bought the Overland Automotive Division of Standard Wheel Company and in 1912 renamed it Willys–Overland Motor Company. From 1912 to 1918, Willys was the second-largest producer of automobiles in the United States, after the Ford Motor Company.

The story of Volkswagen begins with the ubiquitous ‘Beetle’ that was the largest-selling vehicle model in history. That dazzling success was blighted in the 1970s, but VW made the transition from rear-air-cooled to front-liquid-cooled cars and became the largest vehicle producer in the world.

The Volvo brand was created as a subsidiary company of Swedish bearing maker SKF (Svenska Kullagerfabriken), but instead of being stamped into bearing races the Volvo logo appeared on the grilles of cars and trucks from 1927.

Founded in Vauxhall, London, in 1857, Alex Wilson and Company became Vauxhall Iron Works from 1897, making pumps and marine engines. In 1903, the company built its first five-horsepower, single-cylinder car and around 70 were made before the car was improved with wheel steering and a reverse gear in 1904. 

TVR was a British manufacturer of high-end sports cars. The company manufactured lightweight sports cars with powerful engines and was, at one time, the third-largest specialised sports car manufacturer in the world, offering a diverse range of coupés and convertibles.

The Triumph Cycle Co Ltd was formed in 1897 and in 1902 began producing Triumph motorcycles at its Coventry factory. Triumph’s first car was produced in 1923 and the brand came to a sad end, typical of many British car brands, in 1980.

Nesseldorf, the company that later became Tatra, made its first car, the Präsident, under the direction of engineers Hans Ledwinka and Edmund Rumpler. It was exhibited in 1897 in Vienna and in the next two years, nine improved cars based on Präsident were made.

Talbot or Clément-Talbot Limited was a British automobile manufacturer founded in 1903. Clément-Talbot’s products were named just Talbot from shortly after introduction, but the business remained Clément-Talbot Limited until 1938 when it was renamed Sunbeam-Talbot Limited. 

The ‘Sunbeam’ name was registered by John Marston in 1888 for his bicycle manufacturing business and Sunbeam motor car manufacture began in 1901. The motor business was incorporated into the Sunbeam Motor Car Company Limited in 1905 and Sunbeam motorcycles were not made until 1912.

The Ideal Motor Car Company, organised in June 1911 by Harry C Stutz with his friend, Henry F Campbell, began building Stutz cars in Indianapolis. Harry had been building cars for 14 years, including the ultra-low-chassis American Underslung in 1907 and had developed his own-design three-speed transaxle.

Founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 under the name of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, the company was originally a producer of wagons for farmers, miners and the military, and became a significant manufacturer of motor vehicles for about 60 years.  

In 1902, Reginald Walter Maudslay joined his cousin Cyril Charles Maudslay at his Maudslay Motor Company, to make marine internal combustion engines. The marine engines did not sell very well, so they made a three-cylinder, overhead-camshaft car engine, designed by Alexander Craig.

In 1901 the successful Singer cycle company began motor vehicle production motorcycles, tricars and then four-wheel cars. Singer is best known for its pre-World War II overhead-camshaft powered light cars. Sadly, the company couldn’t emulate that pre-War success after 1945 and it fell into Rootes hands in 1955. The end came relatively swiftly.

Saab Automobile AB was founded in Sweden in 1945, when its parent company, Saab AB, began a project to design a small automobile. The company had been established in 1937 to build aircraft for the Swedish Air Force.  As the War drew to a close, the company looked to diversify.

After developing a template for the modern bicycle with its Rover Safety Bicycle of 1885, the company moved into the automotive industry. It started building motorcycles, then cars, using the Viking Longship badge from 1904. After World War II, Land Rover vehicles were developed and added to the Rover range. Jaguar Land Rover, a subsidiary of Indian-based Tata, has owned the Rover brand since 2008.

Henry Royce started an electrical and mechanical business in 1884, producing dynamos and cranes. In 1903 he caught the motoring bug and bought a Decauville light car that inspired him to build his own machine. Two, twin-cylinder 10hp Royce cars followed in 1904 and attracted the attention of Charles Rolls, the proprietor of an early motor car dealership. The rest is history.

Given the Riley brand’s turbulent first few years it’s a miracle that we had Riley cars at all. William Riley and his sons juggled companies and products for the first few years of the 20th Century, before a more cohesive organisation formed in the 1920s. Riley was acquired by Nuffield in 1938 and became part of BMC in 1952, before its inevitable demise in 1969.

When the Raleigh Bicycle Company discontinued the manufacture of three-wheeled vehicles in 1934, works manager T L Williams and a colleague E S Thompson decided to build their own vehicle in Williams’ back garden. Their home-built prototype closely resembled the Karryall van previously built by Raleigh and was licensed in January 1935.

Ferdinand Porsche founded a Stuttgart-based automotive design company with Adolf Rosenberger and Anton Piëch in 1931. After its best known early achievement – the design of a Volkswagen (‘people’s car’) – Porsche went on to build its own cars and establish a lineage of sporting machinery that continues today.

The Oakland Motor Car Company was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan, by Edward Murphy, a manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages. William (‘Billy’) Durant, founded General Motors in 1908 and in 1909, Oakland became part of GM. Oaklands continued and were supplemented by the first Pontiac-branded version in 1926.

The Plymouth brand was introduced at Madison Square Garden on July 7, 1928 and was Chrysler Corporation’s entry in the low-priced field, previously dominated by Chevrolet and Ford. Plymouth continued as a Chrysler brand until 2001. The logo featured the ship Mayflower that landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.

In 1896, the George N Pierce Company added bicycles to its product line and, after an unsuccessful steam-powered car in 1900, built its first two-speed, no-reverse-gear Motorette, designed by Yorkshireman David Ferguson and powered by a single-cylinder, de Dion engine. 

When Armand Peugeot became interested in automobiles, in the mid-1880s, the Peugeot family had been in the French manufacturing business since 1810, producing saws, grinders, umbrellas and bicycles. The first Peugeot automobile – a three-wheeled, steam-powered car designed by Léon Serpollet – was produced in 1889.

Panhard et Levassor was established in 1887 as an automobile manufacturing company by René Panhard and Émile Levassor, whose engineering background was in woodworking machinery.  The first vehicles were based on a Daimler engine licence. 

Packard was founded in 1899 by James Ward Packard, his brother William and their partner, George Lewis Weiss, after mechanical engineer, Packard believed they could build a better horseless carriage than the Winton cars owned by Weiss.

Opel is a global brand, with one of the richest traditions in the world. In 2019 Opel celebrated 120 years of automobiles and this company that started in a garage in Rüsselsheim am Main had produced more than 70 million vehicles by that anniversary date.

Oldsmobiles were first manufactured by the Olds Motor Vehicle Co, co-founded by Ransom E Olds, with financial backing from Samuel L Smith, in 1897. In 1901 the company produced 635 cars, using Dodge Brothers transmissions, making Oldsmobile the first high-volume, gasoline-powered automobile manufacturer. 

NSU originated as a knitting machine manufacturer and in 1886, the company produced bicycles, before motorcycles appeared in 1901, followed by the first NSU car in 1905. ‘NSU’ was a contraction of Neckarsulm, the company’s home town.

D Napier & Son Limited was a British engineering company best known for its luxury motor cars in the Edwardian era and for its aero engines throughout the early to mid-20th century. Many world speed records on land and water, as well as the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest fighter planes, were powered by Napier engines.

WRM Motors Ltd began in 1912 when bicycle manufacturer William Morris moved on from the sale, hire and repair of cars to car manufacturing. He planned a new light car assembled from bought-in components and his first vehicle was the Morris Oxford of 1913.

MG is a British automotive marque initiated by Cecil Kimber, who was the general manager of William Morris’ Morris Garages. Best known for its open two-seater sports cars, MG also produced saloons and coupés, with engines up to three litres in size.

Mercedes-Benz has introduced many technological and safety innovations that later became common in other vehicles. Mercedes-Benz is one of the best-known and established automotive brands in the world.

The Mazda story began in 1920, when the Toyo Cork Kogyo Company switched from manufacturing cork-substitute product to mechanical engineering.

On March 23, 1909, Wilhelm Maybach established the Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau-GmbH company (Aircraft Engine Building Company), which was the predecessor of the Maybach brand. 

Today, Jeep is one of the world’s best-known brand names, but back in 1940 the only ‘Jeep’ anyone had heard of was ‘Eugene the Jeep’, a 1930s comic-strip character in E C Segar’s ‘Popeye’ series. 

There were originally six Maserati  brothers – Alfieri, Bindo, Carlo, Ettore, Ernesto and Marco – and all were involved with automobiles from the beginning of the 20th Century. Marco became an artist and Carlo died in 1910. Alfieri and Bindo went to work for Isotta-Fraschini and then Alfieri opened a motor garage in 1914. Ettore, Bindo and Ernesto joined him.

During the automotive boom of the early 1900s, brothers Howard and Walter Marmon built their first automobile in 1902, in Indianapolis.  However, there were hundreds of fledgling auto makers at that time and the Marmon Brothers were determined to build a special type of vehicle.