Coachbult.com - Elkhart Carriage & Motor Car Company



Elkhart Carriage & Motor Car Company - Elkhart Carriage & Harness Co. - 1873-1920 - Elkhart, Indiana

ELCAR - Elkhart, Indiana - (1916-1931) - Shortly before Halloween in 1916; the Pratt brothers - William B. and George B. - who had changed their mild; frequently before regarding the Pratt car they were building, changed their minds once again...Now, they decided, they would no longer build it, but a new car called the Elcar instead. Unlike the Pratt, which had been provided as a four and a six in the $2,000 range, the Elcar was introduced as a four (Lycoming engine) only at $795. "The Car for the Many" and "Looks like a thousand $, Rides like a thousand $" would be company slogans, and the Pratts reorganized the firm producing their vehicles to Elkhart Carriage & Motor Car Company. If the curious inclusion of "carriage” in the organization's title seemed a step backward at this late date, it was in fact, but the Pratts soon changed their minds about continuing in the horsedrawn vehicle building business anyway. In order to make way for the building of ambulance bodies for World War I, the brothers destroyed the equipment they had been using since before tie turn of the century to build carriages - and even some partially finished carriages as well- and never built another. Meanwhile, a six (Continental engine) was added. the Elcar line for model year 1918. Two days before the Fourth of July in 1921, the Pratts had their last change of mind about their company. They sold out to a number of former Auburn executives - F.B. Sears, A.M. Graffis, GW. Bundy, W.H. Deni_ - and retired shortly thereafter. Though the firm's name was, subsequently changed to Elcar Motor Company, it was business as usual for the Elcar for the next few year.;, with the car being continued in a line of fours and sixes, though their prices edged upward increasingly. F.B. Sears would sit in the Elcar's presidential chair, and M Graffis would be chief engineer for the remainder of the marque's life. Beginning. late 1922, Elcar entered the taxicab field, after beating out Driggs for the contract to manufacture 1,000 cabs for the Diamond Taxicab Company of New York City. Taxi cab production continued to the end as well - with Elcar producing its own taxis (both fours and sixes) as well as variations (the Elfay, Martel, Royal Martel) for other taxi entrepreneurs. The biggest news from Elcar during the mid-Twenties was the introduction of a Lycoming-engined straight-eight for 1925, and the dropping of the four after 1926. Lockheed hydraulic brakes were introduced on the eight, which bE!!lillll as a 65 hp car offered in one series and which was expanded to several model lines of increasing horsepower thereafter, culminating in a top-of-the-line 140 hp eight thai was among the most puissant engines in America of the period, out powered only IJIII the Duesenberg and Cadillac V-16. Late in 1926, Elcar president Sears was quoted as saying that "as long as the small producer of automobiles realizes his limitations and makes the most of his opportunities, he is assured a 'place in the sun'." But, there wasn't one any longer for the Elcar after the stock market crash. Although receivership was temporarily averted in 1930, it arrived irrevocably in 1931. In final desperate attempts to save the company, the Elcar people collaborated with Alvan Po designer of the Lever engine, and with Harry Wahl who was attempting to revive the Mercer. Prototypes of both the Lever and the new Mercer were built on the _ chassis in the Elkhart factory. But then it was all over, though some of the Elcar IJOOIi: stayed on awhile producing taxicabs called El-Fay and Allied.

Elkhart Carriage and Motor Car Company of Elkhart Indiana, manufacturers of the Elcar and Pratt-Elkhart, built ambulance bodies during WWI.

For more information please read:

Beverly Rae Kimes - The Classic Car

Beverly Rae Kimes - The Classic Era

Beverly Rae Kimes - Packard: A History of the Motorcar and Company

Beverly Rae Kimes & Henry Austin Clark Jr. - Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942

Richard Burns Carson - The Olympian Cars

Raymond A. Katzell - The Splendid Stutz

Marc Ralston - Pierce Arrow

Brooks T. Brierley - There Is No Mistaking a Pierce Arrow

Brooks T. Brierley - Auburn, Reo, Franklin and Pierce-Arrow Versus Cadillac, Chrysler, Lincoln and Packard

Brooks T. Brierley - Magic Motors 1930