The Gray Light Car was a cyclecar built in
Longmont, Colorado
The City of Longmont is a home rule municipality located in Boulder and Weld counties, Colorado, United States. Longmont is located northeast of the county seat of Boulder and north-northwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.
Longmont ...
, in 1920 by H A Gray. Only two prototypes were made and, though articles of incorporation for the Gray Light Car Corporation were filed in July, it never reached production. Company officers were given as Gray, H M Koutz, G E Gumston, E J Kiel, and J H Vickery. Koutz and Keil were cigar manufacturers.
Gray continued to promote the cars into early 1921, but was unable to raise sufficient interest or the $1 million capital to proceed. He had planned to start producing 25 automobiles per day at a 14,000 square foot factory in Longmont once the price of steel had stabilized. Steel prices had fallen after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
but surged again in 1920.
Gray claimed to have advance orders for 2,500 cars. He did set up an experimental testing station at the McFarlane-Eggers Machinery Company on the corner of 28th and Blake Street, Denver.
Gray was unlikely to ever succeed. The large car companies such as
Ford and
Chevrolet
Chevrolet ( ), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet (1878–1941) and ous ...
had reduced their costs to the point where cyclecars needed to be produced on a very large scale in order to compete.
[Cyclecars, History of Early American Automobile Industry - 1891-1929, Chapter 21, http://www.earlyamericanautomobiles.com/americanautomobiles11a.htm] A
Model T cost $260 in the 1920s. Between 1920 and 1921 America was in a severe
depression.
Prices for the Gray were set at $350 for a single cylinder motor cycle engined car and $450 for a twin cylinder. The cars used
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson, Inc. (H-D, or simply Harley) is an American motorcycle manufacturer headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1903, it is one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depressi ...
engines and weighted 850 lbs with a body and 540 lbs without. The car ran on motorcycle wheels and had room for two people. It was claimed to obtain 50 miles per gallon of gasoline. The cars transmission had two forward gears and reverse.
External links
Photograph of the Gray cyclecarGray Light Car Corporation stock certificate
References
*David Burgess Wise, ''The New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Automobiles''.
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United States
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