The Chandler Motor Car Company produced

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...

s in the United States of America during the 1910s and 1920s.

Corporate strategy

It was incorporated in 1913, with Frederick C. Chandler as President, headquartered and with its factory in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, Ohio. Chandler was a former designer for the

Lozier The Lozier Motor Company was a brass era producer of luxury automobiles in the United States. The company produced automobiles from 1900 to 1918, in Plattsburgh, New York and from 1910, at Detroit, Michigan. History Lozier Motor Company was fo ...

Motor Company, a top end luxury automobile manufacturer. Chandler and several other Lozier executives left the company to form his company. Chandler concentrated on producing a good quality motor-car within the price range of middle class Americans. Chandlers were well received in the marketplace.

Production

In 1920, Chandler had a line of six cars, ranging from $1995 to $3595. This grew to 10 by 1922, ranging from $1495 to $2375. Like many other medium-price carmakers, in the middle 1920s Chandler introduced a lower-priced "companion car" called the Cleveland. In 1924, they introduced the "Traffic Transmission," a

constant-mesh gearbox A manual transmission (MT), also known as manual gearbox, standard transmission (in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), or stick shift (in the United States), is a multi-speed motor vehicle transmission system, where gear changes ...

that reduced the need for extra clutching when downshifting. This was several years before General Motors offered the "Synchro-Mesh" transmission, which allowed the driver to shift into first gear while moving forward at low speeds. Chandler's peak year was 1927, when they sold 20,000 cars. Hopes for continued growth of the market led to overexpansion by the company the following year, which finished 1928 over half a million

dollars Dollar is the name of more than 20 currencies. They include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, Un ...

in debt. In 1929, Chandler Motor Company was purchased by its expanding competitor

Hupp Motor Car Company Hupmobile was an automobile built from 1909 through 1939 by the Hupp Motor Car Company of Detroit. The prototype was developed in 1908. History Founding In 1909, Bobby Hupp co-founded Hupp Motor Car Company, with Charles Hastings, for ...

for its factory and manufacturing facilities, and the brand was discontinued. Chandler, like most cars built before all-steel bodies became the industry standard in the mid-1930s, used bodies built with a metal skin around a wooden frame (an "armored wood" frame).

G.N. Georgano George Nicolas "Nick" Georgano (29 February 1932 – 22 October 2017Nick Georgano
Alvis Archive Bl ...

''Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930''. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985) Due to the use of fabric roofs, after a few decades the wood tended to rot; because of this Chandlers have survived in smaller numbers than some other popular automobiles of the era that used all-steel bodies.

Production models

* Chandler Light Weight Model 19 Touring 1919 * Chandler Metropolitan Sedan, 1922

References

{{reflist Manufacturing companies based in Cleveland Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1913 Motor vehicle manufacturers based in Ohio Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United States Defunct manufacturing companies based in Ohio Historic American Engineering Record in Ohio Hupmobile 1913 establishments in Ohio Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1929 1929 disestablishments in Ohio