When I was young I used to wonder why a company called Autocar built only trucks. One frequently saw Autocars then. They were as popular as Federals and Brockways, if not as common as Reo or White. My father explained that once upon a time Autocar had done just that: built cars.
The Autocar Company was established in 1900 in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. It was said to be the first American car with shaft drive, and Autocars pioneered other features like left-hand drive and controls on the steering tiller or column. At first the cars were of two-cylinder configurations, but in 1905 the Type X twin was joined by a four-cylinder Type XI.
In 1907, Autocar began to build commercial vehicles. These were of cab-forward design, and included buses as well as trucks. This 1912 model once belonged to high-profile collector Henry Austin Clark, Jr. By 1911, the trucks were so successful that Autocar ceased to build cars.
Early Autocar trucks had the engine under the seat, initially a twin-cylinder but fours from 1920. In 1927, a conventional line, with the engine up front under a hood, was added. Six-cylinder trucks of five-ton capacity came in 1928, and by the mid-30s a pattern of sustained sameness set in, with a simple upright grille with prominent nameplate and squared-off cab. A streamlined cab-over-engine model was offered as well.
Autocars were big trucks – there were no pickups as offered by Reo or even Mack. They were found in over-the-road service as well as on city streets. By the 1960s, diesels had become the mainstay of the fleet.
Financial woes in the early ’50s resulted in acquisition by White in 1953. The trucks didn’t change much as they became the top-line model in the White catalog. This continued through the 1960s, ’70s, and the White-Volvo-GMC period of the 1980s and ’90s, The Autocar name was finally dropped in 2000.
But Autocar lives. In 2001, Grand Vehicle Works of Highland Park, Illinois, purchased the name and now builds Autocar Xpeditors for the refuse collection industry.
Last month while on an errand to southern Vermont I came across this field of Autocars beside the road. Parked long ago, they basked in the afternoon sun, a flatbed, a stake body and a dump truck. Old Autocars never die – they just sit and watch the traffic.
