The Colonial was an American

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarde ...

manufactured in 1920 by the Mechanical Development Corporation of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. The car came with a

straight-eight The straight-eight engine (also referred to as an inline-eight engine; abbreviated I8 or L8) is a piston engine with eight cylinders arranged in a straight line along the crankshaft. The number of cylinders and perfect primary and secondary en ...

engine; it also featured disc wheels, with an extra pair mounted at the side as spares. The body was a hardtop, calibrated so that the driver could turn it into either a sedan or a

touring car Touring car and tourer are both terms for open cars (i.e. cars without a fixed roof). "Touring car" is a style of open car built in the United States which seats four or more people. The style was popular from the early 1900s to the 1930s. Th ...

simply by rearranging the windows. Production models were to sell for $1800, but only the prototype was completed. The Colonial is chiefly remembered today because it was the first American car to feature four-wheel hydraulic brakes. The Mechanical Development Corporation announced in 1924 that the 1921 prototype would be put into production in a new $2.5 million factory which could build 12,000 cars a year, but these plans never eventualized. The prototype Colonial still survives.

References

Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United States Motor vehicle manufacturers based in California {{Vintage-auto-stub

See also

References