Our automotive historian relates trends that became short-lived automotive fads.  

 DURING the dawning years of the automobile industry, design and development was only limited by the imagination. 

Most everything seemed like a good idea. Right hand or left-hand steering. Tiller or steering wheel. Steam, petrol or electric power. Three or four wheels, six wheels, eight wheels. Back seat or front seat driving.

By 1910 the eccentric and dreamer had given way to investors, stockholders and multinational corporations. Profits dictated development, sales, and marketing. An increasing standardisation of the industry left little room for the profitable development of automotive oddities or niche market vehicles.

On occasion a fad or crisis would spark a short-lived anomaly in the market. The diminutive 900-pound Crosley with its anemic two-cylinder engine that proved quite popular during World War II and the era of petrol rationing was an example. Likewise with Kaiser Frazer after the war.

Taxation proved to the be the catalyst for Sir Herbert Austin’s post WWI baby. The Austin Seven was conceived to circumvent Britain’s crippling horsepower tax that was introduced in 1921. And it was similar taxation, especially in Europe, that gave rise to the short-lived cycle car craze of the mid-teens.

The concept was not new. Some of the earliest automobiles were a blending of car, bicycle, and motorcycle. Engines were usually an air-cooled single cylinder or V-twin linked to a motorcycle gearbox. And they were often belt or gear driven. The bodies were lightweight and sometimes offered minimal weather protection or comfort features. They were produced in two-, three- and four-wheel configuration.

By 1910, the cyclecar was on the fast track to becoming an historic footnote. But then Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, and the Netherlands began implementing a series of graduated taxes and registration fees. These were applied to imported vehicles as well.

The lowest fees were charged for light cars or voiturettes. There were two categories that fit this classification. The weight limit for large vehicles was 350 kg (772 pounds)     . Motors could not exceed 1,100 cc (67 cubic inches). Small cars could not weigh more than 150 kg (331 pounds). Motor size was capped at 750 cc (46 cubic inches).

Initially it was truly a niche market. In Britain and France, there were less than a dozen manufacturers of cycle cars. And these companies that specialized in limited production were counted among the largest producers of cyclecars in the world.

It was a throwback to the infancy of the industry with little standardization. Even the definition of cycle car was subject to interpretation.

Indicative of the growing popularity of these niche market vehicles was the launch of The Cyclecar magazine in November 1912. One month later, at a meeting of the Federation Internationale des Clubs Moto Cycliste, manufacturers from ten countries gathered to hammer out details as well as a standard of classifications that could be universally applied.

An editorial entitled Some Conditions Which the Cyclecar Must Meet was published in an issue of Horseless Age Magazine in 1913. “To all appearances the cyclecar, which, for some time past, has been common in Great Britain and upon the Continent, is about to make its appearance in the American market upon a commercial scale. Its introduction may be considered as one more step in the process of popularizing self-propelled transportation, which has been going on for years past. The time has now come when, practically speaking, every person in the land desires to own a motor vehicle and is only deterred from purchasing it by his inability or unwillingness to pay the first cost of a car of the regularly accepted type, and subsequently to meet the expense incident to its maintenance.

Within recent years the motorcycle has furnished the means of mechanical transportation to a multitude of persons to whom the ownership of a car was out of the question, and this extensive use of the motorcycle has paved the way for the cyclecar, for it has familiarized and fascinated a large number of persons with mechanical propulsion. Possibly it has also accentuated some of the shortcomings of the two wheeler—for instance, its instability and its unsociability—and awakened a desire for a vehicle possessing the economy of the motorcycle with something of the stability and sociability of the motor car.”

By 1914 there were hundreds and hundreds of manufacturers in Europe, Canada, and the United States. There were two companies in Austria and seven in Canada. In France more than fifty companies were manufacturing cyclecars. Between Britain and the United States there were more than four hundred companies.

Pioneering and innovative automobile manufacturers were soon swept up in the craze. Benjamin Briscoe, the man who financed the launch of Buick and that partnered with Johnathan Maxwell to create Maxwell Briscoe, built the Argo in Jackson, Michigan.

Built between 1914 and 1918 in a factory previously used to manufacture the Standard Electric Car, the Argo was an outgrowth of Briscoe’s Motorvique and Ajax cyclecars. These had been manufactured in France.

In 1917, Briscoe sold the company to Mansell Hackett. Operations were relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Cadwaller “Carl” Washburn Kelsey was a promotional and marketing genius. He was the first to conceive the idea of a filmed auto commercial. And it was his marketing acumen that propelled Maxwell Briscoe to a position as one of the leading automobile manufacturers in the country.

After a disagreement with Benjamin Briscoe, he established the C.W. Kelsey Manufacturing Company to produce the Motorettes, a cyclecar, in late 1910. It was an innovative, and by all accounts, a durable vehicle.

To ensure stability of the three wheeled vehicles, an anti-sway bar was mounted crossways in the front and connected to the ends of the axle. As a result, both front springs to work up and down together. The single rear wheel was connected to the chassis by a pair of flat leaf springs.

Kelsey’s intent with the Motorette was to offer a durable vehicle at a price anyone could afford. At $385 it was almost half the cost of a Model T Ford.

Published advertisements noted that “a healthy girl of ten can crank it.” In a highly publicized stunt Kelsey had two men drive a Motorette from New York to San Francisco in the winter. As they did so without mechanical failure the adventure proved the Motorette’s reliability, strength, and durability.

The Motorette and the cycle car were a fad that quickly passed. They were a good idea at the time. Today they are an obscure footnote in automotive history.

Written by Jim Hinckley of jimhinckley