Austin-Healey Sprite

You could say that the car was as cute as a bug’s ear, but its bug-eyes gave it the indelible icon that has stayed with us for nearly 50 years. Austin-Healey SpriteThe Austin-Healey Sprite wasn’t the first car that Donald Mitchell Healey built, nor was it the best, but, due to its appealingly affordable price and its so-cute-you-want-to-cuddle-it visage, the Sprite is the Healey car that has the most universal charm.

Indifferent spirit

Healey’s saga was already moving into its third act when the Sprite was presented in 1958. DMH, as he liked to be called, was born in 1898 in Perranporth, Cornwall, the son of a shopkeeper who finally became a land developer. Like Herbert Austin and Henry Royce  before him, the young Healey became enamored of tools, machinery and the most infant industry of the day, aviation. He left school to join Sopwith and within months, the outbreak of World War I encouraged Healey to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps.  Immediately, he shifted from mechanic to aviator, but his short flying career ended when he crashed in 1916. Mustered out of the service soon after, he returned home to Cornwall where he involved himself in two other fledgling industries: automobiles and radios. Read more . . .

Packard Twin Six

Its memory is a bit dusty now and clouded by time, but there was a time when the name Packard had all the authority of the vaunted British marque Rolls-Royce. Packard Twin SixWhile Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds set out to make cars for the “common man,” the Packard brothers, James Ward and William Doud, decided they would sell cars to men of uncommon richness. Their plan made sense because, before they had even built their first motorcar, the Packards themselves were gentlemen of substance.

Richer well-to-do’s

By the time the last decade of the 19th century rolled around, the Packard family had reached a comfortable, well-to-do standing  in the town of Warren, Ohio. Moving to what was then a small village in the 1850s, the Packard clan established a lumber mill, hardware store, hotel and an iron rolling mill over the course of the next 40 years or so, providing them with a decidedly upper middle class lifestyle. Read more . . .

Oldsmobile Curved Dash Runabout

Henry Ford is the man commonly given credit for transforming the automobile from a rich man’s toy to every man’s transportation.It was another Michigan resident, however, who set the stage for Ford’s revolution. Before Ransom E. Olds, the few cars that were being assembled were fabricated individually in machine shops and sold on a catch-as-catch-can basis to those few rich enough to afford the high asking prices. Olds was the man who orchestrated the innovation from the shop to the assembly line, making the automobile reasonably priced to a far larger audience, thus setting the stage for Henry’s Model T.

Oldsmobile Curved Dash

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Inveterate tinkerer

The son of a machinist, Olds studied accounting at a Lansing, Michigan, business college, but he always considers more at home in his father’s shop. With his schooling over, he joined the business, which operated in the thrilling world of repairing farm machinery. An inveterate tinkerer, Olds had dreams far beyond fixing plows.

In the late 1880s, several men from around the world were coming to the same assumption: Read more . . .

Aston Martin DB4

There is a lovably oddball character to the British motor industry that is epitomized by Aston Martin. Aston Martin DB4While their American cousins quickly produced automobiles in mass manufacture, starting with Ransom E. Olds before the turn of the last century, the British seemed perfectly satisfied to approach car building as a cottage industry. Hammer out a few here, put together a few there, and perhaps build a little bit of earnings into the enterprise. This was the ourlin for many British car builders, from Morgan to Jaguar to MG to Triumph to Aston Martin.

Marking its name

The original Aston Martin partners,  Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford, completed the first car in 1914, didn’t register it with the British government until 1915 and didn’t assemble a second car until 1920. Bamford was an engineer and Martin was a driving enthusiast, and both men competed fairly triumphantly in hill climbs, including a famous event at Aston Clinton, which would ultimately give the marque half its name. After campaigning Singers, Bamford & Martin Ltd, as their leisurely automotive enterprise was called, decided to Read more . . .

Citroen Traction Avant Berline

Citroen is  commonly acclaimed for introducing the first front-wheel-drive production automobile. That would be quite a difference, but the fact is it’s not true. Citroen Traction Avant BerlineCord, Ruxton and Gardner all  proposed production front-wheel-drive automobiles several years before Citroen joined the party. The importance of Citroen’s involvement  is not that it was first with front-wheel-drive, but that it was the first company to make front-wheel-drive a true success. Unfortunately, that victory came almost simultaneously with Andre Citroen’s death, so the legendary French auto magnate never got to enjoy the fruits of his gamble.

Henry Ford of France

By the way, there is no doubt,  that Andre Citroen was a gambling man. The son of a Dutch diamond broker, Citroen was born in 1878 and by the time he reached the age of 25, he was a force to be taken seriously in French industry. After graduating from technical college, he obtained a license for a Russian process of machining gear teeth and, license in hand, set up a machine works. The gears rapidly gained a reputation for silence and strength, and Citroen’s business, which he manage with great vigor, became very profitable. Soon the prominent French automobile producer Mors asked him for technical assistance, his first foray into the car industry. Read more . . .