A Car Designed To Sell To An Automotive Company
While employed in the engineering department of the Budd Body Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Muller convinced his employer to invest in developing a front wheel drive prototype automobile. Budd would then sell the rights to the car to an automotive company which would contract with Budd for the body work. While Muller designed the drive train, Joseph Ledwinka designed the body for the car and the project was completed in 1928.
In an era when the American automobile had an average height of six feet from the ground to the level plain of the roof, Muller’s car was only 53 inches (1,300 mm) high, a feat accomplished by eliminating the drive shaft to the rear wheels. Ledwinka accentuated the lowness to ground through the elimination of the running boards.
Instead of attracting an automotive producer, Muller’s concept car attracted the attention of Archie Andrews, a member of Budd’s Board who also sat on the Board of Hupmobile. Andrews recognized the possibilities of producing the car and made it possible for Muller and Budd to present the idea to Hupp.
When Hupp passed on the car, Andrews took on the project himself, and with Muller formed New Era Motors which would market the car. Still, Andrews lacked an ability to build the car, and hoped-for support from Peerless, Gardner, and Marmon failed to materialize.
Read more about this topic: Ruxton (automobile)
Famous quotes containing the words car, designed, sell and/or company:
“The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old- fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“... in the movies Paris is designed as a backdrop for only three things—love, fashion shows, and revolution.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)
“If Uncle Sam should ever sell that tract for one cent per acre, he will swindle the purchaser outrageously.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“We are imprisoned in life in the company of persons powerfully unlike us.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)