Dort Motor Car Company

1922 Dort sedan in the Gilmore Car Museum
1918 Dort sedan and sedanet
Share of the Dort Motor Car Company, issued 25. April 1922

The Dort Motor Car Company of Flint, Michigan, built automobiles from 1915–1924. Dort used Lycoming-built engines to power their vehicles.

Dort Motor Car Company grew from Durant-Dort Carriage Company founded in 1886 by William C. Durant and J. Dallas Dort. They remained business partners until about 1915. Durant-Dort Carriage Company was dissolved in 1924. It may have continued to own the buildings plant and machinery used by Dort Motor Car.

Dort and the remaining stockholders took over the carriage business. They incorporated Dort Motor Car Company and began to use some of the same plant to manufacture Dort cars[1] buying in engines from Lycoming. Carriage production ended in 1917.

Dort shipped 9,000 cars in its first year.[2]

By 1917, Dort was offering four models: a closed sedan at $1,065, a convertible sedan at $815, a five-place open tourer at $695, and a Fleur-de-Lys roadster at $695.[3] By contrast, Ford Model Ts were selling for $440 in 1915.[4]

By 1920 Dort was the country's 13th largest automobile producer[5] but in 1924 Dort decided to retire and he liquidated Dort Motor Car Company. He sold the factory building to AC Spark Plug.[6]

J Dallas Dort died the following year.[7]

Notes

  1. ↑ Automobile News. Chicago Livestock World, 23 March 1916
  2. ↑ Wood, Edwin Orin (1916), History of Genesee County, Michigan: Her People, Industries and Institutions, Volume 1, Federal Publishers, p. 778, retrieved April 7, 2013
  3. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 1, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-22.
  4. ↑ G.N. Georgano 1985
  5. ↑ "Josiah Dallas Dort" (PDF). General Motors. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
  6. ↑ Alan Naldrett, Lost Car Companies of Detroit, History Press, Charleston S C, 2016
  7. ↑ Alan Naldrett, Lost Car Companies of Detroit, History Press, Charleston S C, 2016

Sources

  • G.N. Georgano, G. N. (1985). "Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886–1930". London, UK: Grange-Universal.
  • Naldrett, Alan (2016). Lost Car Companies of Detroit. Charleston, SC: History Press.

See also

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