In the early decades of the 20th century, many ambitious entrepreneurs were able to start car companies.
Entry was fairly easy for a talented blacksmith, carriage-maker or bicycle-builder with ingenuity and mechanical skills. The investment was relatively small, and cars could sometimes be presold before they were built, giving the budding builder some working capital. Hundreds of these would-be Henry Fords sprang up, but most soon disappeared, sometimes after building only one prototype.
It was possible to enter the car-manufacturing business because in addition to the parts the builders could make for themselves, there were many suppliers of such components as bearings, brakes, transmissions and steering gears. Vehicles made mostly of these supplied components became known as "assembled" cars.
The engine is the heart of a car and the automotive pioneer's biggest challenge. Designing and building an engine is expensive and exacting work requiring specialized equipment and skill. Fortunately, there were also proprietary engine companies with names like Hercules, Lycoming, Duesenberg, Weidley and Wisconsin that sprang up to supply them.
The most successful of these specialized engine builders was Continental Motor Corp. of Muskegon, Michigan, producer of the Continental "Red Seal" engine named for the distinctive red badge on the block.
Although there were other suppliers, Continental built power-plants, predominately with six cylinders, for the majority of American manufacturers who did not make their own.
Continental's story began in 1903, when a young engineer named Ross Judson was able to borrow enough money from his sister and brother-in-law, A.W.
Tobin, to found an engine-manufacturing company in Chicago.
Partners Judson and Tobin called their new enterprise the Autocar Equipment Co., and managed to display an engine at the 1903 Chicago auto show.
They collected enough orders to support the construction of a new plant in Muskegon. A few years later, Continental branched out with a 45-horsepower aircraft engine.
Before long, when they learned that a truck manufacturers in Pennsylvania was already building vehicles under the Autocar name, the company was renamed Continental Motor Corp.
Orders for engines began to flow in from car manufacturers like Studebaker and Chalmers.
Studebaker placed an order for 1,000. Then in about 1910, the recently formed Detroit-based Hudson Motor Co. ordered 10,000 engines, and the young Continental company was on its way.
Continental's approach was to design and build engines, usually of the side-valve type, that were rugged, reliable and uncomplicated. They started out with two-cylinder units, then concentrated on fours for a while before expanding to a six in 1911 and eventually an eight. Hudson sold so many Continental sixes in its 1913 model 54 that it claimed to be the world's largest purveyor of six-cylinder cars. This prompted Continental to open a Detroit plant.
In the teen years, Continental's designs proliferated into a large number of engines, not just for specific orders but to develop a catalogue of off-the-shelf power.
Its salesmen showed them to prospective customers, and if Continental didn't have a stock engine that fitted the purchaser's exact specifications, it would modify one of its designs to suit. In fact, they built so many different bore and stroke combinations that it sometimes became confusing even for the salesmen.
The 1920s were Continental's boom years as they supplied engines to over 100 companies, including Durant, Reo, Willys, Auburn, Peerless, Graham, Ruxton and Checker, plus many smaller firms now long forgotten.
Then came the 1930s, when many auto manufacturers disappeared under the economic crush of the Depression, taking away much of Continental's business. To counter this, it diversified into diesel, aircraft, truck and industrial engines. It also marketed its own Continental car based on the short-lived deVaux. Alas, it was short-lived for Continental too, being produced only in 1933 and '34. It proved to be an expensive experiment.
Of the automobile customers that remained from the '30s, Continental supplied engines to Graham-Paige Motors of Detroit until 1941 and the Checker Cab Co., later Checker Motors Corp., of Kalamazoo, Michigan, from the 1930s through to the '60s.
With much of its car engine business gone due to the Depression, Continental was in financial trouble, but with the advent of the Second World War it shifted into more aircraft and truck engines, both gasoline and diesel. It also built engines for such industrial applications as agricultural machinery and construction equipment. After the war, it would provide engines for the popular Cessna 150 and Beechcraft Bonanza airplanes, among others.
In 1945, when the new Kaiser-Frazer car company was organized, it decided to use Continental side-valve 3.7-litre six-cylinder engines. When Continental couldn't supply the number required, K-F began producing some of them itself.
Continental became part of Teledyne Technologies Inc., in the 1960s, becoming Teledyne Continental Motors. It is still a prominent manufacturer of aircraft engines.
