Cotner-Bevington
The Cotner-Bevington Corporation was an American automobile manufacturer . The in Blytheville ( Arkansas -based company) had specialized in the production of vehicles for companies (ambulances, hearses etc.).
history
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The Cotner-Bevington Corporation was founded in 1959 in Blytheville, Arkansas. After the Comet Coach Company from Memphis (Tennessee) had sold the brand name Comet to the Ford Motor Company in 1959 and the co-owner Jack Pinner founded his own company with the Pinner Coach Company , the other two owners named Waldo J. Cotner (1909-2001) and Robert Bevington (1911-2000) converted the company into Cotner-Bevington Corporation.
In the first few years mainly Oldsmobile and, to a lesser extent, Chevrolet and Buick were rebuilt. General Motors supplied the company with unfinished Oldsmobile Super 88 and Oldsmobile 98 vehicles . The vehicles were lengthened and equipped with corresponding enlarged side windows. The cladding was made of steel.
From 1962 Cotner-Bevington began to offer a vehicle called Seville on an unchanged Oldsmobile chassis. The vehicles had a higher roof but retained the original windshields and side windows. From 1963 industrial glass was used in the side windows.
The Divco-Wayne Corporation acquired Cotner-Bevington in 1965 in order to be able to offer an inexpensive alternative to their Cadillac vehicle conversions from Miller-Meteor . From this time on, Cotner-Bevington used the chassis of the Oldsmobile 98. The aim of Divco-Wayne was to turn Cotner-Bevington into a body construction company where as many body variants as possible could be offered from standardized parts. In addition to the body, the equipment was standardized, so all vehicles offered from 1967 had a radio and air conditioning. In 1968 Cotner and Bevington sold their shares in Divco-Wayne after differences over the further company direction and founded the American Quality Coach Company .
In the same year Divco-Wayne was acquired by the timber company Boise Cascade . However, this was only interested in the prefabricated house department and sold the rest of the company to the textile conglomerate Indian Head Inc.
From the early 1970s, Cotner-Bevington vehicles were also produced under the Wayne Sentinel brand name. At the same time, the demand for patient transport vehicles based on passenger cars also declined. With the EMS Systems Act , passed in 1973 and coming into force in 1978 , municipalities and counties received government funding if they procured ambulance vehicles that met the new uniform requirements. Such vehicles based on cars were no longer provided.
In 1975 the production of vehicles by Cotner-Bevington was stopped and the company closed.