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The list of dead American car brands includes well-known names like Pontiac, Studebaker and Mercury.
These carmakers shut down after building thousands (and sometimes millions) of cars for decades, and at least some of their models are fondly remembered today. What about the smaller firms?
Hundreds of manufacturers operated in the United States after the turn of the 20th century and most are as unknown as if they had never existed a century later. Their story is no less fascinating; some closed because they were too far ahead of their time while others simply couldn’t figure out basic economics. Join us as we dive into the fascinating world of America’s obscure car brands:
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Woods Electric (1899-1918)
Woods Electric was founded in Chicago after a group of entrepreneurs and investors (including, ironically, some flush with oil money) pooled their resources in a bid to gain a significant share of America’s electric car segment. They purchased patents from Clinton E. Woods (1863-1930), hence the name. It didn’t take long for Woods to venture out of the electric car segment. Its line-up included gasoline-powered models and gasoline-electric hybrids as early as 1905.
It ditched both to focus on electric cars in 1907, a strategy which worked well until the segment alarmingly began shrinking in the second half of the 1910s. Management tried saving the company by renaming it Woods Dual Power and again adopting hybrid technology in 1917. The system consisted of a four-cylinder engine and an electric motor that drew electricity from a 24-cell, 48-volt lead-acid battery pack. Although undeniably innovative, the Dual Power (pictured) was a slow, heavy and extremely expensive way to travel. Repairing it was costly and time-consuming, too. Warranty claims played a big role in sinking the company. It shut down in 1918 after filling 628 of the roughly 1300 orders it had for the year.
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Holsman (1903-1910)
Made in Chicago, the Holsman Highwheeler (pictured) was a trendsetter in the early 20th century. Company founder Henry Holsman (1866-1963) noticed passenger cars made during that era often got stuck on the muddy and rocky roads that zig-zagged across rural America so he released a model with, as its name implies, big wheels. Its “rides like a carriage” advertising slogan struck a chord in the United States. That’s exactly what buyers wanted; think of the Highwheeler as the SUV’s long-lost ancestor.
Holsman increased its production capacity by six in 1906 as sales took off and dozens of competitors entered the blossoming high-wheeler segment. And yet, it shut down in 1910. In hindsight, Holsman’s reluctance to adopt tires – which offered a much smoother ride – drove it into the ground.
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Detroit Electric (1907-1939)
Although it’s far from being a household name, Detroit Electric remains America’s longest-operating manufacturer of battery-powered cars – even Tesla hasn’t outlived it yet as of today. It traced its roots to the Anderson Carriage Company, which was founded in Michigan in 1884, but the name Detroit Electric first appeared on a car in 1907. It became the firm’s name in 1919. Electric cars were surprisingly popular in the early 20th century because they were relatively easy to start and drive; they didn’t have a crank or a gear selector. Many were consequently marketed as women’s cars.
Henry Ford’s wife, Clara, notably drove her 1914 Detroit Electric Model 47 into the 1930s. Like many period electric cars, Detroit Electric’s early models wore an unusually low front end because there was no need to package a four- or six-cylinder engine between the wheels. This is an advantage that stylists continue to exploit today. However, as the popularity of electric cars waned around the turn of the 1920s, Detroit Electric made more conventional-looking cars with grilles and vents in order to prop up its sales. It survived a near-death experience after the Great Depression but it slowly faded away until it shut down in 1939. Attempts to resurrect the brand in the 2000s have been unsuccessful.
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Scripps-Booth (1912-1922)
Scripps-Booth developed some of Detroit’s most innovative and advanced cars. Its first prototype, the Bi-Autogo, used a V8 engine, a self-starter powered by compressed air and a cooling system that included 450 feet of copper tubing. It was deemed too expensive to mass produce but other models followed and word quickly spread across the Atlantic.
Winston Churchill bought one of its cars, as did the King of Spain and the Queen of Holland. Chevrolet took over Scripps-Booth in 1917 and the brand was shut down in 1922 after making about 60,000 cars. Our photo shows the 1913 cyclecar prototype named Rocket.
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Stout Engineering Laboratories (1932)
William Stout (1880-1956) worked as Scripps-Booth’s chief engineer before joining Packard’s plane-building division. He returned to the automotive industry when he founded Stout Engineering Laboratories in 1932 and quickly began working on a spacious, aerodynamic car many consider the modern minivan’s long-lost predecessor.
Its tall, wide body covered a cavernous interior in which every seat except for the driver’s could be moved. Power came from a rear-mounted, Ford flathead V8. Stout refined the car (which he named Scarab due to its insect-like shape) and sold it by invitation only to hand-selected customers. Historians disagree on how many examples were made; all agree on at least five - as that number survive today - but possibly up to nine, none of which were identical.
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Arrowhead (1936)
Arrowhead is better known for bottling spring water than making cars, but it commissioned a droplet-shaped three-wheeler in 1936 to drive around and promote its brand. Heralded as the car of 1960, it featured a featured a rear-mounted V8 that spun the front wheels and a directional rear wheel. Only a single example of the Arrowhead was built by Los Angeles-based Advanced Auto Body Works. Its whereabouts are unknown today, though it was allegedly spotted on a truck in the 1980s.
There’s little evidence suggesting Arrowhead planned to mass-produced its car. It wasn’t just a marketing gimmick, though. The company truly wanted to move automotive technology forward.
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Beechcraft (1946)
Beechcraft briefly set its sights on the automotive industry when demand for its airplanes dropped after the Second World War. It built a four-door, six-passenger prototype named Plainsman that was nothing short of groundbreaking. In-wheel electric motors (four in total) received electricity from an on-board generator powered by an air-cooled four-cylinder plane engine.
It was highly aerodynamic, largely built using aluminum and fitted with an air suspension. It was also far too expensive to build in significant numbers. Beechcraft made a single prototype, studied it closely and consigned it to the attic. It abandoned its plans to become an automaker and instead focused on what it knew best: airplanes.
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Scootmobile (1946)
Michigan-based engineer Norman Anderson displayed a stunning mix of ingenuity and optimism when he rummaged through the American Army’s war surplus bin to cobble together a tiny economy car. He used a bomber’s auxiliary fuel tank to make the body, dropped it on three wheels normally found on the end of a landing gear and powered his creation by an air-cooled, single-cylinder engine mounted in the rear.
He hoped to sell the car – which he called Scootmobile – for $350, which represents about $5000 in today's money. Historians disagree about the number built but many believe Anderson only managed to make a single prototype before throwing in the towel. It hasn’t been seen in many decades.
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Davis (1947-1949)
Glenn Gordon Davis positioned the Divan at the intersection of performance and economy. It made its debut in 1947 as a sleek-looking three-wheeler with four seats and a removable hard top. Early models used a Hercules four-cylinder engine, though Davis planned to offer buyers a wide selection of engines.
The Divan turned many heads in the automotive industry because it looked like nothing else on the road and innovative automotive start-ups were as newsworthy in the 1940s as they are today. The Davis company collapsed in 1949 after being sued separately by its dealers and its employees and its founder was convicted of fraud; he died in 1973. Davis made 17 cars including prototypes. Pricing should have started at $995 (about $12,000 today).
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Playboy (1947-1951)
Car dealers Louis Horowitz and Charles Thomas founded Playboy in 1947, six years before the magazine of the same name published its first issue. Its first car was a three-seater convertible with a folding metal top and a four-cylinder engine built by Hercules. Pricing started at $985 (approximately $12,400 today) and the roadster generated a relatively positive reaction from style-hungry enthusiasts.
Playboy made several mechanical changes to its convertible. It fitted a Continental engine shortly after production started and later replaced it with a four-cylinder built by Willys. Production ended in 1951 and the New York-based company disappeared shortly after. Production numbers are unknown.
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TASCO (1948)
Gordon Buehrig (1904-1990), an engineer and designer who worked on several Duesenberg and Cord models, founded The American Sports Car Company (TASCO) to make, you guessed it, American sports cars. Sometimes called Special, the company’s first and only model looked a little bit like a plane without wings. It was powered by a V8 engine sourced from Mercury and modified for better performance.
Some sources claim Buehrig built the TASCO to convince executives from the Beechcraft Aircraft Company to branch out into the sports car segment after they abandoned the Plainsman project. They allegedly took a close look at the prototype (pictured) but decided building it would have been more complicated than it was worth. Although the Special remained a one-off, its T-top roof caught the attention of designers around the world and Buehrig patented the design in 1951. He sued General Motors when Chevrolet released a Corvette with a similar roof design in 1968 and won.
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Bobbi-Kar (1945-1950)
Bobbi-Kar started making a range of fiberglass-bodied economy cars immediately after World War II. Small, light and cheap, its models all used a water-cooled four-cylinder engine and a Torilastic suspension developed by BFGoodrich.
Bobbi-Kar was founded in California but it circumvented the state’s financial regulations by moving to Alabama and renaming itself Dixie Motor Car Company. It continued to make an updated version of the Bobbi-Kar named Keller, and it enlisted a network of 1500 dealers, but production ground to a halt after investor George Keller died of a heart attack in 1949.
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Kurtis (1949-1950, 1954-1955)
Frank Kurtis (1908-1987) of Indianapolis 500 fame set out to build his own car in the late 1940s. Its long, streamlined body was made with fiberglass and its performance depended largely on the engine chosen. Just about any V8 made in the era fitted into the engine bay, though power often came from one of Ford’s eights. Kurtis sold the convertible as a kit or as a complete, turn-key car. He found about 36 buyers for it.
Earl Muntz (1914-1987) bought the design in 1950 and re-released the roadster with minor changes (pictured) the following year. Kurtis returned to the automotive industry in 1955 when he designed a rolling chassis that enthusiasts could use as a base on which to build the car of their choice. Of the 50 chassis built, 20 became a Cadillac-powered convertible named 500M that posted impressive performance figures.
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Chicagoan (1952-1954)
Chicagoan designed a two-seater roadster it sold either as a kit or as a complete car. The fiberglass-bodied convertible came with a Willys-sourced straight-six engine but horsepower-hungry buyers could pay extra for a V8. The company sold approximately 15 cars, a disappointingly low number that reflects the vast number of options buyers in the market for a composite-bodied convertible had at the time.
It became Ketcham’s Automotive in 1954 and launched an updated version of the convertible named Triplex Lightning. It was still available as a kit or fully built but the six-cylinder was dropped; buyers were invited to pick an engine from the long list of V8s available at the time from mainstream manufacturers. Production ended in 1955 but sales figures are lost to history.
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Arnolt (1953-1959)
Stanley Arnolt, a Chicago industrialist, enlisted the help of Bertone to turn the MG TD into a much more modern-looking four-seater. He sold 65 coupes and 35 convertibles, according to most estimates, starting in 1953. Pricing started at $3585 (about $36,000 today). He also sold rebodied Aston Martin, Bentley and Bristol models before exiting the coachbuilding industry in 1959.
Auction house RM Sotheby’s sold the 1955 example shown here for $38,500 in 2011. One of the firm’s Bristol-powered models sold for a cool $401,000 in 2018.
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Powell (1955-1956)
Powell built a wide selection of products including scooters and motorcycles. Its entry into America’s booming pickup segment wasn’t entirely unexpected but it was extremely unconventional. Instead of starting from scratch, which would have cost a fortune, the company refurbished 1941 Plymouth frames it sometimes purchased from junkyards, rebuilt 1940s straight-six engines sourced from the same manufacturer and topped each chassis with a steel body it designed in-house.
Powell’s trucks were handsome and cleverly designed, they notably featured long storage tubes integrated into their rear ends, but production ended sooner than expected because finding donor cars became too difficult. It nonetheless made about 1000 trucks and 300 units of an SUV-like model built with the same components.
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Henney (1959-1964)
Illinois-based Henney was well-known as a coachbuilder; it spent decades turning various Packards into ambulances and hearses. It embarked on a new venture when, with the help of the National Union Electric Company, it transformed a humble Renault Dauphine into an electric car named Kilowatt. The conversion involved removing the rear-mounted four-cylinder engine and fitting an electric motor initially powered by half a dozen six-volt batteries. The company quoted a 40-mile range and a 40mph top speed. It added a bigger battery pack made up of 12 batteries later in the production run.
Henney charged $3600 (about $33,000 today) for the Kilowatt and the new powertrain drastically increased its weight to 2245 lb. For context, the regular-production Dauphine started at $1645 (around $15,000 today) and weighed 1397 lb. Henney allegedly ordered 100 Dauphine bodies from Renault, though how many were converted to electric drive is a mystery. Most historians agree the Kilowatt retired in 1964.
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Nu-Klea (1959-1965)
The fiberglass-bodied Nu-Klea Starlite was not, as its name would lead you to believe, powered by nuclear energy. It featured one electric motor for each rear wheel and enabled up to 80 miles of range, according to promotional material. Michigan-based Nu-Klea planned to offer an optional Plexiglas top for motorists who wanted to drive the Starlite year-round.
It made several prototypes - one is in the Lane Motor Museum in Tennessee - but told customers it ran out of money before it could start production.
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Saviano (1960)
Saviano’s Scat (a name that stood for Saviano Cargo and Touring) was a Jeep-like model with removable doors, an optional top and an air-cooled two-cylinder industrial engine provided by Kohler. Its body was manufactured with 12-gauge steel. Period brochures bragged about its versatility, its fuel economy and its ruggedness.
The Scat should have cost $1390 (approximately $13,000 today) but there is little indication the model made it beyond the prototype stage, partly because plans to build it in British Honduras (known as Belize today) fell through.
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Mohs (1967-1975)
Mohs designed one of the strangest cars ever built in America. Shaped like something you’d expect to find in a comic book, the oddly-named Ostentatienne Opera had a single door integrated into its rear end because a long steel rail ran down each side in the name of safety. It was assembled on an International-Harvester truck frame and it received one of the company’s V8 engines. It wasn’t cheap; the entry-level model carried a base price of $19,600 (about $160,000 in today's money) and that figure ballooned to $25,600 ($210,000 today) when customers ordered the bigger V8.
Mohs planned to sell a handful of examples annually but reportedly only built one car, which was restored in 2009. It’s not entirely unconceivable that a handful of additional examples were built and destroyed, however. It expanded its range in 1972 with an equally offbeat eight-seater convertible named SafariKar (pictured) also built on International-Harvester bones. Polyurethane foam upholstered with Naugahyde covered its aluminum body. Most sources agree three prototypes were built and two survive.
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