Claude Ernest Cox was an automobile pioneer who’s easily overlooked, because his first car produced in 1903 was branded as the Overland Runabout. It was manufactured by Standard Wheel Company in Terre Haute, Ind.
Charles Minshall, owner
of Standard Wheel, had hired Cox in 1902 to establish a new automobile
department. Twelve cars were built in 1903, and production was doubled in 1904.
In 1905, Cox’s automaking operations were shifted to a Standard Wheel plant in
Indianapolis that was no longer in use.
He had scarcely begun to work when Minshall informed him that he wanted out because it was not proving to be profitable, and he figured that it was not going to be so. In 1906, Cox received financial backing from the nation’s largest carriage maker David M. Parry. They established the Overland Auto Company.
John North Willys was
selling Overland cars in Elmira, N.Y., and he agreed to buy the Overland
Automobile Company’s entire production run for 1907 – it came to 47 cars – and sell
those cars to his customers.
Jim Donnelly of Hemmings Classic Car wrote: “All looked charming until a financial panic upended American financial markets later that year, corking the trickle of Parry’s money that had been keeping Cox in business. Overland simply didn’t have the money to build cars that buyers, through Willys, had already ordered.”
Willys decided to travel to Indianapolis to see what was happening. When he got there, he was stunned to find out that the company had gone bankrupt, Parry had lost everything and there were no cars. Willys took inventory and found only enough parts to build three cars.
The only solution Willys could come up with was to buy the Overland company in 1907.
He erected a large circus tent and restarted the company as Willys-Overland, building 465 cars in 1908.
In 1909, Willys acquired
a nearly new factory in Toledo, Ohio, from the Pope Motor Car Company’s owner
Albert Augustus Pope of Boston, Mass.
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It was here that Willys-Overland Motor Company grew to become the second-largest carmaker in the United States behind Ford (from 1912 through 1918). By 1920, it was said that one-third of Toledo’s workforce was either employed at Willys-Overland or worked for one of its suppliers.
The Magazine of Wall Street described Willys’ story as “one of the most remarkable successes the modern commercial world has ever seen. In one short decade, a shrewd, farsighted young man has fought his way to the very forefront of the world’s greatest industry.”
Willys retired in 1929, stepping down as president and selling his shares of the company for about $25 million – prior to the stock market crash that sent the nation into the Great Depression.
The economic collapse caused numerous carmakers to go out of business, and much of Willys-Overland’s growth had been financed on borrowed dollars. Willys-Overland declared bankruptcy in 1933. John North Willys died in 1935. He was 61.
To lead the company back
to prominence in 1936, the board of directors looked to Ward M. Canaday, a
former Willys-Overman executive with marketing and sales credentials. Canaday
recruited Joseph W. Frazer to bring the Willys 37 Model to market.
Auto industry historian
Mal Pearson of Oakland, Calif., said: “Frazer had been a top sales executive at
Chrysler, where he guided both the Plymouth and DeSoto brands into existence.
Frazer positioned the new Willys as a practical alternative to Detroit’s ‘colossuses.’”
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“The 37 got up to 35mpg
and was advertised as using ‘Half the gas…twice the smartness.’”
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