Turicum was a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

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 ...

manufactured between 1904 and 1906 in Zurich, 1907 till 1912 in

Uster Uster (High Alemannic: ''Uschter'') is a town and the capital of the Uster District in the Swiss canton of Zürich. It is the third largest town in the canton of Zürich, with almost 35,000 inhabitants, and is one of the twenty largest towns ...

. ''

Turicum Turicum was a Gallo-Roman settlement at the lower end of Lake Zurich, and precursor of the city of Zürich. It was situated within the Roman province of Gallia Belgica (from AD 90 Germania Superior) and near the border to the province of Raetia; ...

'' is the Latin name of Zurich. The first car made by Martin Fischer was a small single-seater go-kart like vehicle, 140 cm long, with pedal-operated steering and powered by a motorcycle engine. It had chain drive but a second prototype had

friction drive A friction drive or friction engine is a type of transmission that utilises two wheels in the transmission to transfer power from the engine to the driving wheels. The system is naturally a continuously variable transmission; by moving the two ...

. The friction drive consisted of a flat steel disc coupled to the engine which drove a small, leather-covered wheel running at right angles to its surface. The small wheel could be moved across the surface of the large disc, giving an infinitely variable gear ratio. They attracted little public interest. The Swiss industrialist

Jakob Heusser Jakob Heusser-Staub (3 March 1862 – 23 August 1941 as Jakob Heusser) was a Swiss industrialist and philanthropist. Born and raised in the village of Irgenhausen, Heusser-Staub made Uster his home. With the support of his wife, Berta, he founded ...

was also involved to establish the car manufacturer.

Production cars

More conventional production cars, manufactured in Uster, with steering wheel and two-seater body were shown at the Paris Salon in 1906 and had a single-cylinder air-cooled engine of 785 cc capacity. A false radiator was fitted that acted as a fuel tank. The friction drive was retained and would be used on all the future cars. In 1907 the 10/12 hp model with four-cylinder engine of 1385 cc was introduced, and the single-cylinder model had its engine enlarged to 1045 cc. Two- and four-seat, open and closed bodies were offered. Martin Fisher left the company in September 1907. In 1912 a 16/26 model with 2613 cc engine was announced and this could be ordered with a conventional gearbox.

Exports

Sales in the home country were good, and cars were exported to Egypt, Italy, France, Germany, England, Denmark, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Argentina and South Africa, but the company hit financial problems and stopped production end of 1912, but kept registered until 1925.

Preservation

Some eleven cars still survive.

References

External links

conceptcarz has picture of the 1907 Turicum 12 HP Model F at the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland
Car manufacturers of Switzerland Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of Switzerland Defunct companies of Switzerland Uster {{Brass-auto-stub