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The Lost Marques: Names that faded with the years

© Dan Cooper

The automotive world was shattered by the Great Depression. In the aftermath of the financial disaster that was the world economy's worst crash (so far), the so-called "big ticket" items took some of the heaviest hits, as they were the things people decided not to replace until absolutely necessary. One of the biggest of the big ticket items on the financial agendas of North Americans is the automobile. As a result of the Depression, a market filled to the brim with offerings from hundreds of different manufacturers, quickly dwindled to a handful of companies, and most of those struggled to continue. [See article, Nash, Hudson and American Motors: Demise of the Independent Automakers ]

Many of the names from pre-Depression times seem strange, like monikers from science fiction. Yet neither their strange sounding names nor their inability to sufficiently compete in a stricken economy detracted from their viability as inventive, or for that matter, high-quality automobiles in their time. Collectors and avid followers of automotive history will be among the few who recall names like Kissel Kar, Moon, Locomobile, Roamer, Templar, Sperling, Chandler, Ajax, American Underslung, Brush, Crow-Elkhart, Meteor, Stoddard-Dayton, Overland, and Silent Knight. The author recalls his father rattling off names like these, sounding a bit like recitation in a foreign tongue.

In the Treasury of Early American Automobiles (1950), author Floyd Clymer compiled a list of over 1,500 American automobile manufacturers. The foreward to the Standard Catalog of Independents states, "The true history of independent automobile manufacture involves thousands of automakers...(many of whom) were in business for only a short while, with only one or two vehicles to show as their contribution to the auto industry." Ralph Kinney Bennet, in his article, Mad for Motorcars , says, "More than 3000 car companies were started in the United States in the opening decades of the auto age...." With such an extensive selection the industry provided a rich catalog of names, many if not most of which are now unfamiliar sounding.

Oldsmobile is the most recent of the great old companies from the very beginning of the industry, to fail after 107 years of production, in 2004. A fine article by Sinclair Powell, commemorating the passing of this fine old name can be found at Requiem for Oldsmobile. For those readers who remember nothing farther back than the "This isn't you father's Oldsmobile" era, it would be beneficial to take a look at this article, and gain an appreciation for the innovations and differences this marque has provided for automotive history.

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