General Automobile & Manufacturing Company

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Hansen Automobile Company
General Automobile & Manufacturing Company
legal form Company
founding 1902
resolution 1903
Reason for dissolution insolvency
Seat Cleveland , Cuyahoga County , Ohio , USA
management Rasmus Hansen
Branch Automobiles

The Hansen Automobile Company , which was reorganized as General Automobile & Manufacturing Company in its founding year 1902 , was an American automobile manufacturer from Cleveland ( Ohio ) that was only active from 1902 to 1903. The brand names were Cleveland , Hansen, and General ; there are no known links to other vehicle manufacturers using the same brand name.

Company history

General Automobile & Manufacturing Company advertisement from 1903. The 8 HP Runabout is advertised as "the only two-cylinder model at a reasonable price".

Cleveland was an early automotive center. Manufacturers in the city included Peerless Motor Car Corporation , Garford Company , electric car maker Baker Motor Vehicle Company, and Winton Motor Carriage Company, the oldest of these companies.

The Hansen Automobile Company was founded in 1902 by Rasmus Hansen . He was a Danish immigrant who came to the United States at the age of 18. The automobile he made was a solidly built Voiturette with a 6 HP single cylinder engine that was only offered in the runabout design . The first vehicles were sold as Cleveland . This brand name was used by various manufacturers, for example at the same time as Hansen from the Cleveland Automobile Company , to which no connections are known.

The Hansen sold quite well. In September 1902 the company was reorganized as the General Automobile & Manufacturing Company . The background was a planned capital increase to finance larger plants. This went hand in hand with the new brand name General , an improved vehicle with 8 HP power at US $ 900, - and a new 14 HP two-cylinder model , which cost US 1000, - and was bodied as a tonneau . In the summer of 1903 the output was one vehicle a day; the dealers, however, complained about a halting delivery. The slogan on an advertisement for the general read: The Machine extraordinary, the Price ordinary ; analogous to "The vehicle unusual, the price cheap".

The investors withdrew after an application for an automotive production license was rejected by the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM). The ALAM was an association of automobile manufacturers, which represented the owners of the Selden patent and tried to gain legal control over motor vehicle production in the USA. The patent attorney and inventor George Baldwin Selden had filed it in 1896 and later sold it to monopolists. Based on this patent, the ALAM ousted other motor vehicle manufacturers and importers out of business by suing for damages and omission: Whoever was not granted a license was not allowed to manufacture or import automobiles with internal combustion engines in the USA.

The reasons for the rejection of the request from General Automobile & Manufacturing are unclear and seem objectively unjustified, because the General was a clean construction and his manufacturer was a serious company. The automobile historian Beverly Rae Kimes calls it "absurd" and her colleague Thomas Bonsall notes that the role of ALAM was an "inglorious" one. "Respectable" for them was anyone who got on well with the most important members, Packard and Oldsmobile. Henry Ford had been refused a license for just as incomprehensible reasons. At least he sees a possibility that General could have acquired a license later, but that never happened. The withdrawal of investors led to the bankruptcy of General Automobile & Manufacturing Company in September 1903 . Then 25 vehicles that had been started were completed. These, together with the systems and inventory, were acquired by the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company in October . This purchase made sense for Studebaker, because the company was planning to start its own production of automobiles with combustion engines in addition to the production of its electrics . It is therefore more than astonishing that this was not subsequently done. What Studebaker did with the systems afterwards is unknown, but the manufacture of vehicles can be ruled out. Of the 25 General vehicles purchased, only that is known to have been shipped to Studebaker's headquarters in South Bend, Indiana . There their trail is lost.

technology

General lists this advertisement from the engine manufacturer Brennan as a reference in 1905.

The Brennan Motor Manufacturing Company in Syracuse (New York) led General nor 1905 as a reference for their engines and transmissions. The company built both into a subframe, which reached the customer in a ready-to-install condition. Two-speed planetary gears or conventional three-speed gears, each with reverse gear, were available as options. However, it is not known whether Brennan drives were used in all series and which gearboxes Hansen ordered. The planetary gearbox was common in the class, at least for 6 HP and 8 HP . At around this time, Brennan was building a vehicle similar to the General 8 HP .

The Hansen 6 HP was a typical motorized buggy with a water-cooled single - cylinder engine that was placed under the seat in a horizontal position and across the direction of travel. General 8 HP and General 14 HP were two-cylinder models .

It is known from the 6 HP that the four-stroke engine had a cylinder bore of 4½ inches (11.43 cm) and a stroke of 5¾ inches (14.605 cm). This results in a displacement of 91.45 ci , which is almost exactly 1.5 liters. At that time, the performance data were not measured, but usually calculated using a method introduced by the ALAM in 1903 .

A modern attribute of all vehicles was a water cooler attached to the front of the vehicle. Behind it was a storage space, which probably contained the water tank and was a bit larger on the General models. In the cheaper competitor model, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash , the water cooler was installed under the floor of the car.

In all models, power was transmitted to the rear axle by means of a drive chain; Figures show a chain for 6 HP and 8 HP ; It is unclear whether double chains (one chain per rear wheel) were used for the more powerful 14 HP . It was important to General to determine that each chain was tested for fivefold loads prior to installation.

The Hansen 6 HP seems to have been the starting model from which the two General series were merely derived. It was delivered either with wire-spoke or artillery wheels . Literature and illustrations show that the Hansen 6 HP had a steering lever attached to the outside right on the driver's seat, which was optionally also mounted in the middle. The display for the General 8 HP clearly shows a steering wheel in place of the "cowtail" lever.

A wheelbase of 78 inches (1981 mm) is specified for the General models .

  • Hansen 6 HP Runabout with artillery wheels and steering lever on the outside of the vehicle (1902).

  • General 8 HP runabout with steering wheel (1903).

Model overview

Only incomplete data are available.

construction time brand model cylinder Cubic capacity
c.i. 		Cubic capacity
cm³		 Wheelbase
inches		 Wheelbase
mm		 body Prices
US $		 source
1902 Cleveland Cleveland 6 HP 1 91.45 1498 Runabout 2 seats
1902 Hansen Hansen 6 HP 1 91.45 1498 Runabout 2 seats
1902-1903 general General 8 HP 2
Brennan 		78 1981 Runabout 2 seats 900.00
1902-1903 general General 14 HP 2
Brennan		 78 1981 Tonneau 1000.00

Racing

A Hansen 6 HP finished second behind a stronger Elmore in a race organized by the Cleveland Automobile Club on the Glenville Driving Track in 1902 . Opened in 1870 as a trotting track , the facility consisted of an oval one-mile circuit, a timekeeper stand and a covered grandstand. Glenville was a well known early car racing venue. The plant existed until 1910. Glenville has been a district of Cleveland since 1906.

Overview of car brands from the US, the Cleveland include

brand Manufacturer Marketing start End of marketing Location, state
Cleveland Sperry Engineering Company 1898 1900 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Hansen Automobile Company 1902 1902 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Cleveland Automobile Company (from 1902) 1902 1904 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Cleveland Motor Car Company 1905 1909 New York City, New York
Cleveland Cleveland Electric Vehicle Company 1909 1910 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Cleveland Cyclecar Company 1914 1914 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Cleveland Automobile Company (from 1919) 1919 1926 Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland three-wheeler American Bicycle Company 1900 1901 Cleveland, Ohio

annotation

  1. ↑ Ford produced without a license and allowed ALAM to take legal action. The process lasted eight years and went through two instances. It ended with a partial success for Ford, because the court declared the patent ineffective in the most economically essential part.
  2. ↑ The power is calculated: cylinder bore ² × number of cylinders; the result is divided by the constant 2.5. The formula became more imprecise with increasingly higher speeds; later the more practical formula of the Society of Automobile Engineers emerged from this ( SAE-PS ).

literature

Web links

Commons : Hansen Automobile  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : General Automobile  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Kimes, Cark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 675 (Hansen / Cleveland).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Bonsall: More Than They Promised: The Studebaker Story. 2000, pp. 54-55.
  3. ↑ American Automobiles: The General Automobile & General Automobile Co.
  4. ^ Kimes, Cark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 144 (Brennan).
  5. ↑ American Automobiles: The Hansen Automobile & Hansen Automobile Co.
  6. ↑ a b c d Kimes, Cark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 634 (General).