The Car-Nation (also known as Carnation) was a brand of

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

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

, by the American Voiturette Company from 1913 to 1914. The Car-Nation roadster was an

cyclecar A cyclecar was a type of small, lightweight and inexpensive car manufactured in Europe and the United States between 1910 and the early 1920s. The purpose of cyclecars was to fill a gap in the market between the motorcycle and the car. A key ...

costing $495. The vehicle had a four-cylinder Herreshoff "25" engine and a three-speed transmission. Car-Nation also manufactured a larger four-seat Tourer model with a base price of $520. They also advertised a fore-and-aft tandem; it's not known if more than a few prototypes were produced. Two roadsters and five touring cars are known to survive. In 1912, former

Pope-Toledo The Pope-Toledo was the luxury marque of the Pope Motor Car Company founded by Colonel Albert A. Pope, and was a manufacturer of Brass Era automobiles in Toledo, Ohio between 1903 and 1909. The Pope-Toledo was the successor to the Toledo of th ...

manager Forrest Keeton moved his Keeton Towncar Works into a factory in

Wyandotte, Michigan Wyandotte ( ) is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 25,058 at the 2020 census. Wyandotte is located in southeastern Michigan, approximately south of Detroit on the Detroit River, and it is part of the coll ...

, a city south of Detroit on the shore of the

Detroit River The Detroit River flows west and south for from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie as a strait in the Great Lakes system. The river divides the metropolitan areas of Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario—an area collectively referred to as Detro ...

, and formed the Keeton Motor Company. He began construction of his first “French-like” car, the big Renault-influenced, air-cooled Keeton. It sold well enough to allow Keeton in 1913 to launch a second line of continental-influenced, low priced cars under a new name: Car-Nation. All that activity apparently attracted the attention of oil magnate Charles Schaeffer, and shortly after the introduction of the new car, the short-lived Car-Nation Motorette Co. and the existing Keeton Motor Co. unified under his ownership, reincorporating as the American Voiturette Company in

. Slow acceptance of the Car-Nation's nonstandard gauge and reported problems with the Herreshoff engines in the Car-Nation sent the company into receivership in 1914. At a public auction in February 1915, Forest Keeton appears to have bought the assets of the company, including 60 Keetons and 350 Car-Nations, along with machine tools and countless thousands of parts. But while he did supply repairs, he never again built a car.

Specifications (1913 Car-Nation roadster)

ENGINE Type: Herreshoff cast-iron L-head straight-four, integral valves, cast-en-bloc, Displacement , Bore × stroke x , Horsepower 18 (25 A.L.A.M.), Main bearings 2 nickel babbitt, Fuel system Gravity, Zenith updraft carburetor, alloy intake manifold, Ignition system 6-volt, Splitdorf fixed-spark magneto, Lubrication system Splash; plunger pump (note: Car-Nation advertised pressure lubrication, but it does not appear on any of the known cars), Exhaust system Single, iron TRANSMISSION Type:Three-speed Detroit Gear & Machine sliding gear, cone clutch (note: early cars appear to have used an alloy clutch plate. Prone to cracking, later versions have a cast-iron clutch plate) DIFFERENTIAL Type: Weston-Mott semi-floating STEERING Type: Adjustable worm gear BRAKES Type: Rod-actuated manual, Front - None, Rear -1¼ x internal expanding emergency; external contracting service on transmission shaft CHASSIS & BODY Construction: Full-frame riveted 1/8-inch channel steel, 1x3 ash sills, composite body, Body style - One door, two-passenger roadster, Layout - Front engine, rear-wheel drive SUSPENSION Front - Quarter-elliptic leaf springs, Rear - Quarter-elliptic leaf springs WHEELS & TIRES Wheels -Detachable Detroit Stanweld wire, Front/rear 30 x 3 inches WEIGHTS & MEASURES - Wheelbase , Overall length , Overall width , Overall height ; with top, Front track , Rear track , Shipping weight CAPACITIES Crankcase 3 quarts, Cooling system 8 quarts, Fuel tank , Transmission 8 pints, Rear axle 4 pints CALCULATED DATA - bhp per c.i.d. 7.44, Weight per bhp , Weight per c.i.d. PERFORMANCE - Top speed , Fuel mileage , PRODUCTION - Car-Nation, total est. 2,000

References

External links

{{commons category, Car-Nation vehicles
ConceptCars.com
photos of a 1913 Car-Nation roadster

''NOBODY'S DUST'': Cyclecars like the Car-Nation are almost forgotten now—but Henry Ford once worried they'd kill the Model T Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United States Motor vehicle manufacturers based in Michigan Cyclecars Defunct companies based in Michigan Brass Era vehicles 1910s cars

Specifications (1913 Car-Nation roadster)

See also

References

External links