Cartercar
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The Cartercar was an American automobile manufactured from 1906 to 1916 in Detroit Michigan.
A fairly successful maker of friction-drive cars, the company began with a flat-twin engine; this was used alongside vertical fours in the 1909 range of cars. The company merged with the makers of the Pontiac high-wheeler in 1908, becoming part of General Motors in 1909. Two models, both pair-cast fours, appeared in 1912; the Model R was 4160 cc, while the Model S was 5437 cc. Each had a single chain drive. Tragedy struck when Byron Carter, the company head, was killed while trying to start a stalled car; the crank kicked back and hit him in the jaw, causing gangrene which ultimately proved fatal. With Carter's death, the company folded. Carter was a personal friend of Cadillac founder Henry Leland, and his unfortunate death prompted development of the Self-Starter (introduced in 1912), the first motor vehicle electric starting system, eliminating the dangerous crank.
Because its friction-drive transmission allowed selection of any ratio rather than having fixed gear positions, the Cartercar was advertised as "The Car of a Thousand Speeds."
[edit] References
- David Burgess Wise, The New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Automobiles.
- Website for Cartercar enthusiasts
This article about a car produced between 1905 and 1915 is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
This article about a car produced between 1915 and 1930 is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
