Brush Runabout Company

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Brush Runabout on Apelbergsgatan, Stockholm, 1907–1910.
Liberty Brush Runabout (1912) in a private museum in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
oblique view
Side view of another vehicle

The Brush Runabout Company was founded by Alanson Partridge Brush (February 10, 1878 - March 6, 1952) in Detroit in 1907 . He had worked with Henry Ford in his first company , which was a failure. Brush did not get along with Ford's successor Henry M. Leland and he accepted a severance payment of US $ 40,000 from the company, which has now been renamed Cadillac Motor Company . With this he financed part of his company and gained a financially strong investor in the iron goods manufacturer Frank Briscoe . Briscoe was the brother of Benjamin Briscoe of Maxwell-Briscoe .

description

Brush designed a light automobile with a wooden chassis (actually it was wooden side members and steel cross members), friction gears and expansion springs on all four wheels. While there were a variety of runabouts with one to four cylinder engines on the market before the Ford Model T almost completely took over the low-cost sector, the Brush Roadster has a number of unusual details that can be considered as evidence of the inventiveness of its builder. A large single-cylinder engine with water cooling was used for the drive. The car had gas lighting as standard; two headlights and a taillight. The frame and axles were made of oak, hickory or maple wood and were either left raw or painted in the same color as the equipment. The horn was attached to the bonnet and connected to the rubber ball next to the driver by a long pipe. At the back of the vehicle there was a small trunk in a drawer that was pushed under the seats from behind.

Brush, who also designed the first Oakland , the predecessor of the Pontiac , and who had helped design the Cadillac single-cylinder engine, gave his engines a special feature: They ran counterclockwise instead of clockwise like everyone else. Brush saw a point in this, since such a motor could be cranked by a right-hander with greater certainty (without knocking back the crank). The kickback of the starter crank was usually a major problem as it often caused broken thumbs or even forearms, especially if the ignition was inadvertently not set to "late" beforehand.

In 1912, Francis Birtles was the first car driver to cross the continent of Australia from west to east in a Brush .

The Brush Runabout Company was merged with Maxwell-Briscoe, Stoddard-Dayton and other companies by Benjamin Briscoe in 1910 to form the United States Motor Company , which, however, had to file for bankruptcy again in 1913. Runabouts soon became out of fashion, especially because of the poor weather protection of their passengers.

A total of 13,250 Brush Runabouts were made between 1907 and 1911. A restored car from 1909 is on display in the Pioneer Heritage Museum in Brownsville, Oregon .

Models

model Construction period cylinder power wheelbase
A. 1907-1908 1 7 bhp (5.1 kW) 1880 mm
Two-cylinder 1908 2 row 2235 mm
B. 1909 1 7 bhp (5.1 kW) 1880 mm
D. 1910 1 10 bhp (7.4 kW) 2032 mm
E. 1911 1 10 bhp (7.4 kW) 2032 mm

Liberty Brush

Only in 1912 there were Liberty Brush vehicles . The car technically corresponded to the previous year's model. However, they were basic models with little equipment. This allowed the retail price to be reduced to $ 350 . For comparison: Last year, prices started at $ 450.

literature

  • Kimes, Beverly Ray & Clark Jr. Henry Austin: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942 , Krause Publications, Iola WI (1985), ISBN 0-87341-045-9
  • Kimes, Beverly Ray: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America. Published by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Permissions, Warrendale PA 2005, ISBN 0-7680-1431-X . (English)
  • James J. Flink: America Adopts the Automobile - 1895-1910 , MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 1970. ISBN 0-262 06036-1 . (English)
  • Robert D. Dluhy: American Automobiles of the Brass Era: Essential Specifications of 4,000+ Gasoline Powered Passenger Cars, 1906-1915, with a Statistical and Historical Overview. Mcfarland & Co Inc (2013); ISBN 0-78647-136-0 ; ISBN 978-078647-136-2 . (English)

Web links

Commons : Brush Runabout Company  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels , pp. 219-220
  2. ↑ Beverly Rae Kimes, Henry Austin Clark Jr .: Standard catalog of American Cars. 1805-1942. Digital edition . 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola 2013, ISBN 978-1-4402-3778-2 , pp. 865 (English).