TITLE: Vehicle History Report - Free Vehicle History Report, Automobile History, Used Vehicle, Department of Motor Vehicles, Passenger Vehicle

Vehicle History Report Category: Free Vehicle History Report, Vehicle History Reports, Used Vehicle, Motor Vehicle History, Used Car History, Vehicle History Report, Vehicle Identification Number, VIN Number

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THE EARLY YEARS

The oldest make of American auto still in production is easy to remember - it's the Oldsmobile. Ransom Eli Olds started experimenting with various kinds of self-propelled buggies in the late eighteen-eighties, in Lansing, Michigan, preferring steam power to begin with. In the mid eighteen-nineties he came up with a gasoline powered rig with a 5hp, single cylinder motor mounted under its buckboard body. Unlike many of his earlier experiments, it worked, and it sold. Olds was able to raise sufficient capital to set up the Olds Motor Vehicle Company but his initial efforts at volume production failed to produce any volume. At the turn of the century the company received a massive injection of capital and Olds went back to experimenting, this time with electrically powered cars. The fate of the embryo firm was finally fixed by fire. In 1901 the new Detroit factory burned down and the only automobile to be rescued from the flames was a gasoline-powered runabout. The company's survival depended entirely on the success of what came to be known as the curved dash Oldsmobile. Happily, it was a great car and a great success; by 1905 production exceeded five and a half thousand units, making it America's first "volume production" automobile and paving the way for an army of manufacturers to enter this burgeoning and potentially lucrative market.

Just how many took the plunge we will probably never know; for some it turned out to be a long, hot bath, for others it was a distinctly cold shower. In the years before World War I, there were, as now, plenty of people out to make a quick buck from new technology stocks and a lot of investors on hand to make or lose fortunes. Numerous auto companies raised millions of dollars in backing and never built a single car, while Henry Ford tested his first engine in his wife's kitchen. The roll call of freaks and flops and also-rans is very, very long. I suspect that some, especially some of those eye-catching eccentricities driven by springs or compressed air or farmyard manure, have been invented by the compilers and publishers of books like this just to check if someone else is plagiarizing their work. To the best of our knowledge and belief, all the automobiles listed, described and illustrated in the following pages actually existed and many of them exist today! Sadly, many didn't make it, so today we can't go out and buy a Biddle or a Carter or a Heseltine or any of the hundreds of pioneer marques that came, and went, before 1919. Even so, the fact that today we can drive safely and speedily, comfortably and economically is due to their efforts as much as to those of the survivors. The men who dreamed of fame and fortune built on the success of the Friction Drive contributed to the dynamism and vitality of the American automobile industry simply by providing their know-how at a time when nobody knew anything.

It's easy to smile at their efforts, but who knows what might have happened if Olds hadn't managed to pull his gasoline-engined prototype out of that fire? He might have ended up with no more than an insurance payoff and we might all be driving steamers. Stanleys and Dobles would be quietly cruising the highways, nobody would be worried about OPEC and Texas would have more room for raising beef. Would that be so bad?

As it is, America can't claim to have invented the automobile. The work of German engineers, from around the 1870s, produced the Otto four-stroke engine and the Daimler-Benz horseless carriages of the early 1880s. The effect that these developments had, on men like Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, John and Horace Dodge and David Buick, was phenomenal. Within a few years America had taken a European idea and created an industry out of it.

Among the illustrious names of the early days, that of Henry Leland is particularly worthy of mention and especially worthy of respect. Leiand was born in 1843; at the outbreak of the civil war he was a passionate supporter of the Union cause but his Quaker principles prevented him from fighting. Instead, he volunteered for work in the Colt factory in Connecticut. Samuel Colt had pioneered techniques of precision engineering on an industrial scale, managing to work to tolerances of a thousandth of an inch on hand lathes. This allowed him to produce standardized parts, so that, in the event of failure or damage in away in the field, a replacement could be immediately fitted - and would fit! The advantage of this approach over traditional 'bespoke' production techniques is obvious and the young Leland was quick to recognize its potential in the building of automobiles. Whatever romantic notions we may harbor about owning an Aston Martin with a little polished plate mounted on the engine block, bearing the name of the craftsman who lovingly assembled it on a bench in Newport Pagnell, the prospect of being stranded with it in Seattle, with a seized motor, tends to take the gloss off.

Leland entered the auto business in 1902, a year after the fire at Olds' factory. Some of Henry Ford's original backers were getting cold feet over the fact that Ford only seemed interested in building racing cars. Leiand, who already had a reputation as a precision engineer and toolmaker, was called in to value the premises and equipment that had been purchased for producing saleable cars so that it could be sold to recover the investment. Instead, he offered them an improved engine design that had been turned down by Olds and thus was created what has become perhaps the most famous and respected name in the American automobile industry and a by-word for glamour: Cadillac.

The company was named after the aristocratic French explorer who founded the city of Detroit, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. From the very beginning the Cadillac was an object of desire. In January 1903, just a few months after its initial test drive, a ten horsepower, Model 'A' car was exhibited at the New York Automobile show and within a week orders for more than twenty-two hundred had been secured. The Cadillac was a sensation - and a sell-out. Under Leiand's stewardship, Cadillac achieved honor and distinction through superior engineering and innovative design. Most famously, in 1912, Cadillac became the first car to relieve its driver of the task of cranking it up by hand - surely one of the most welcome advances in technology in the whole history of the automobile. To this day, the lavishly produced quarterly magazine, distributed to members of the Cadillac/La Salle Owners Club, bears the proud title The Self Starter. Even before this, in 1908, Leland had demonstrated the excellence of his engineering by taking three, single-cylinder cars to England to compete in endurance trials. There, at the famous Brooklands track, under the supervision of the Royal Automobile Club, the three cars were completely stripped down and their components scrambled. Three cars were then assembled from the pile of parts, started, and ran. At the time, such accuracy in the machining of parts to render them interchangeable in this way was regarded as little short of miraculous. Cadillac won the prestigious Dewar Trophy, the first time this had been awarded to any American manufacturer.

Sadly, in 1917, Leland parted company with Cadillac and with the General Motors Corporation of which it had become part. It was war work that had first inspired him and, ironically, it was war work - or rather the reluctance of William Durant, the then head of General Motors, to switch Cadillac over to war work - that caused him to abandon the company that he had inspired. Though now in his seventies, Leland was still driven by the desire to build better. He founded a new company and named it after the president who he had so admired in his youth: Lincoln.

As with the Cadillac, the Lincoln was a prestige automobile, precision built and held in high esteem today. There was, however, one final twist in Henry Leiand's tale... In the early 1920s, largely due to Leiand's insistence on engineering perfection, production fell way below projections and the company was forced into receivership. Who was it who came along and bought Lincoln out? The very man whose factory Leland had acquired some twenty years earlier to create the Cadillac: Henry Ford. As the Irish say, what goes around comes around; Ford was now the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world. In 1914, the company had produced over 300,000 Model T's; in that same year, the whole of the rest of the American auto industry put together produced less than 200,000 cars.

So the father of the cars that still transport the presidents of the United States passed into history. No car bears his name, but it is, without doubt, one of the most illustrious in the.history of automobile manufacture.

Cadillac once produced an unusual advertisement under the heading The Penalty of Leadership. The words may applied as well to Henry Leiand as to the car he created: "That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live - lives." In the words of one of his engineers, "He was a great mechanic. He understood quality."

The Lincoln Motor Company was founded to produce Liberty aero engines, with not only Leland's son, Wilfrid, leaving Cadillac with his father, but a considerable number of engineers, executives and production-line workers as well.

Shortly afterwards, Durant was forced to begin Liberty engine production and implored the Leiands to return to supervize the transition but they were already committed to their new venture.

The Cadillac auto division, now under new management, continued to supply America's troops - and those of her allies in Europe - with the world's first fully armored cars, as well as staff cars, communications vehicles, field ambulances balloon winches and even artillery tractors, powered by the new V8 engine. The marque gained great distinction during the conflict. A Cadillac was the first Allied car across the Rhine and President Wilson had a convoy of fifty Cadillacs supplied for his visit to Paris. It was even suggested that General Pershing might nominate the Cadillac for the D.F.C.

The army had taken the Cadillac Touring Car exactly as it was, adding only an additional fuel tank, tire chains and olive drab paint. It performed impeccably and won the hearts of many, doubtless influencing many ex-servicemen's post-war purchase choices along the way. As an example of this. Colonel Hall, who had been involved with the design of the Liberty engine, is quoted as saying, "I believe these cars from my observations gave better service than any other make of car in France. I used Cadillac cars from fourteen to sixteen hours a day and most of the driving was done around an average of forty miles an hour. I was never tied up with car trouble at any time. Furthermore, I never saw a Cadillac tied up for trouble of any kind. Many officers would delay their trips until they could get Cadillacs... One of the first things I did on my arrival home was to purchase one for my own use."

VEHICLE HISTORY REPORT

SHOPPING MALL > DEPARTMENT STORE > VEHICLE HISTORY REPORT

TITLE: Vehicle History Report - Free Vehicle History Report, Automobile History, Used Vehicle, Department of Motor Vehicles, Passenger Vehicle

Vehicle History Report Category: Free Vehicle History Report, Vehicle History Reports, Used Vehicle, Motor Vehicle History, Used Car History, Vehicle History Report, Vehicle Identification Number, VIN Number

Site Description: Vehicle History Reports cover vehicle history with automobile specification. You can check your vehicle history from your Vehicle Identification Number or VIN Number.

Vehicle History Report Topics: Free Vehicle History Report, Vehicle History Reports, Used Vehicle, Motor Vehicle History, Used Car History, Vehicle History Report, Department of Motor Vehicles