Grant - Detroit, Michigan - (1913)
Of all the new automobile ventures establishing themselves in business in 1913, the Grant Motor Company of Detroit certainly seemed to be the most solidly based for future success in the country. George Grant and his brother Charles, president and vice-president respectively, had established their automobile dealership at 1000 Woorward Avenue soon after the turn of the century and owned a successful machine foundry as well. Secretary-treasurer David Shaw had been treasurer for the Simplex Motor Car Company in Indiana. Chief engineer James Howe, a Cornell graduate, had held high positions in the engineering departments of Thomas, Cunningham and Selden in New York State, and Studebaker in Indiana. Factory manager George Salzman had built his first experimental gasoline car in Boston in 1897 and thereafter had been production manager for Thomas and Simplex. General sales manager George Waite had served in that same sales position for Thomas and Simplex too, having learned his trade with Alvin Fuller, the dynamic Boston dealer for Packard. As the Automobile Trade Journal pointed out, this group of men constitutes a galaxy of automobile experts whose experience cannot but guarantee the excellence of the product they are turning out.The car had been designed by Salzman and refined by Howe, and was, as its makers rather modestly put it, a thoroughly good low-priced car. The Grant's problem was that it arrived during the cyclecar frenzy and although the company and knowledgeable reporters insisted the vehicle was a miniature motor car, they had little luck in convincing the general populace of this.
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Grant - Findlay, Ohio - (1913-1916)
The Grant was a natty little two-seater roadster on a 90-inch wheelbase with standard 56-inch tread. It was powered by a four-cylinder 12 hp water-cooled engine. It featured shaft drive, a sliding gear transmission, drop forged front axle, and a three-point suspension arrangement of full elliptic springs at the front, semi-elliptic at the rear placed crosswise back of the rear axle. It had perky drum headlamps, nicely curved fenders and sprightly but substantial wire wheels. And its price tag was $495. As a sports car, which the Grant really was (in the much later M.G. TC tradition), it was really a honey. After a small production run in temporary headquarters in Detroit in 1913, the firm moved into the plant of the defunct Findlay Motor Company of Ohio in November of 1913.
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In 1914 a total of 3,000 of these little Grants was produced, but with the cyclecar onus hanging heavy, the line was expanded in 1915 to include a larger six-cylinder car. Production increased to 2100 that year.
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