Historic Car Brands
King
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.
Some background on Charles Brady King is necessary, before getting into the formation of the King Motor Car Company that occurred 15 years later. For that info we’re indebted to the Detroit Historical Society:
‘Charles Brady King was the first (person) to drive an automobile on the streets of Detroit. King was born February 2, 1868, in California, to General John King of Sackets Harbor, New York and Matilda Davenport King of Detroit, Michigan.
‘When his father retired from the Army in 1882, the family moved to Detroit. King studied engineering at Cornell University, until the death of his father in 1888, when he returned to Detroit. His first full-time job in the city was as a draftsman at the Michigan Car Company. (Note that this ‘car’ company produced railroad cars, not automobiles and Henry Ford was a previous employee.)
‘In 1893, King had a display at the Chicago World’s Fair for his pneumatic hammer and brake beam for railroad cars. While there, he saw a self-propelled carriage, designed and built by Gottlieb Daimler, inspiring him to begin designing his own car in Detroit.
The Little Detroit History Letter
‘On March 6th, 1896, he test drove the first self-propelled carriage along Woodward Avenue and reached speeds up to five miles per hour.
(King was disillusioned by the lack of enthusiasm for his and Henry Ford’s four-wheeled machines in the late 1890s, so he dismantled his vehicle and sold off the parts.)
‘In 1902, King joined the Northern Manufacturing Company and a year later became their chief engineer. While there, he designed an automobile that had the first integrated motor and transmission assembly.’
(Obviously, public interest in automobiles had increased greatly in the early 1900s and that must have rekindled King’s interest.)
‘After a hiatus in Europe for two years, to learn more about automobile styling, King founded his own company in 1910 – the King Motor Car Company – in a rented building on West Jefferson Avenue in Detroit.’
The early production cars had four-cylinder, L-head engines, with outputs of 30bhp and 35bhp, and three-speed transmissions with centrally located gear change levers.
Production soon outgrew the space and King moved into the former Hupmobile plant in early 1912. Undercapitalisation meant that just a few months later, the firm was in receivership and King left. However, he retained 64 patents, including the jack-hammer, the lubricated pulley system and the car steering gear.
The King Motor Car Company was bought by chewing gum magnate Artemas Ward for US$40,000. The existing 36 Series and 1913-1915 models retained four-cylinder power, but from the 1916 D Series, all King vehicles were aimed at the luxury end of the market and were powered by the company’s own L-head V8 engines.
1915 King- JayeKaye
The first V8 engines were slightly smaller in capacity, but the production models were 4.6-litre units. The engine featured a cast aluminium block with a combination of pressure and splash lubrication. Rated horsepower was 28.8hp and output, around 60bhp, which was a lot of grunt in those days.
Henry Ford’s mass-produced iron flathead V8 produced around the same horsepower when it was released some 17 years later.
Luray Caverns Car and Carriage Museum, Virginia
In 1916, the United States Marine Corps (USMC) partnered with the Armored Motor Car Company (AMC) of Detroit, to develop and produce armoured cars, based on King-branded luxury automobile chassis.
There was also some export action, with King cars being shipped to Europe, Australia, South America, South Africa and Russia. Of course, the decision to aim at the top end of the automobile market meant prices went up, from a RRP of US$1400 for a four-cylinder tourer in 1915, to well more than double that for a V8 sedan in 1921.
As a direct result, production numbers dropped, but the post WWI recession didn’t help. King production dropped from 3000 per annum to only 240 by 1923, when the company relocated to smaller premises in Buffalo, New York, following purchase of the company by Charles A Finnegan.
However, the change of ownership proved unsuccessful and the King Motor Car Company went bankrupt in 1924. Around 100 remaining King chassis were imported into the UK by Salmons, who fitted some of them with their own coupé bodies.
King’s legacy
Apart from helping Henry Ford with his Quadricycle development in 1896 – an involvement that helped establish Detroit as ‘Motor City’ – Charles Brady King remained interested in the automobile industry throughout his later life, despite a move away from Michigan.
On Long Island Sound he enjoyed his many interests that included being a poet, architect, painter, musician, model maker and yachtsman.
In 1939 he was one of the founders of the Automobile Old Timers, which later became the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan. It’s a who’s who of pivotal automotive design and manufacturing people, and numbers around 800 inductees.
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