Automobile Trade Journal And Motor Age

A surprisingly little-known marque today, Elcar once ranked among the finest vehicles on American roads. Built to exacting standards in Elkhart, Indiana, an Elcar could compete head-to-head on the basis of performance, quality, or price with the products of much larger manufacturers. Ultimately done in by weak distribution and the ravages of the Depression, Elcar today stands as an example of an ambitious company that transformed itself, successfully if temporarily, from a maker of buggies and harnesses into a respected car manufacturer in the early days of the automotive age. This remarkably exhaustive history, researched over several decades from all available sources, including interviews with former Elcar employees, details all Elcar models and the Pratt vehicles that preceded them, as well as the personalities behind the cars. Extensive appendices provide a complete model history, with specifications; a full corporate chronology; an illustrated accounting of all Elcars and Pratts known to survive whole or in part today; a roster of company employees; a descriptive list of all ads and brochures ever produced by the company; and a wealth of other data that can be found nowhere else. Lavishly illustrated and surpassingly thorough, this book is a well of information on a significant but forgotten line of automobiles.

Incorporated by veteran automakers in 1913, the Chandler Motor Car Company was initially successful in a fiercely competitive industry, manufacturing an array of quality automobiles at a range of prices. Yet by the late 1920s the company was floundering under mismanagement. Producing four lines of cars with numerous body styles, Chandler and its lower-priced companion marque, Cleveland, were unable to find markets for their numerous models and seemed in effect to be competing against themselves. Drawing on numerous automotive histories and two large private collections of memorabilia, this exhaustive study of the Chandler Motor Car Company covers the automobiles in detail, including all body styles, and their changes during production. The author chronicles the growth, expansion and later troubles of Chandler and Cleveland, providing fresh insight into the formative years of the auto industry and the personalities who made it go.