If you put the words “America” and “Cars” together you’d probably come up with Henry Ford, or the car-manufacturing behemoth General Motors. But in terms of automobile history they are over-shadowed by a “short-tempered” Scot, who built the first commercially-sold car in the United States and, although now mostly forgotten, can really be described as the man who put America on the road.
Alexander Winton was born in Grangemouth on 20 June, 1860, and as a young man served an apprenticeship in the Clyde shipyards. He emigrated to the United Sates at the age of 20 where he worked in iron mills and as a steamship engineer. By the 1880s he had moved to Cleveland where he set up the Winton Bicycle Company.
By the mid 1890s, Winton’s focus had shifted from bicycles to automobiles and he determined to make the best and fastest of these. He announced his “horseless carriage” in the Horseless Age magazine in October, 1896.
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The vehicles that he built were all made by hand, weighed over 1,000 pounds and initially ran on bicycle tyres. The sides were painted, the seats padded, there was a leather roof and as he improved the design, they began to reach (what were then) astonishing speeds of around 34mph. There was initial scepticism about the ability of this new automobile. Winton responded by putting his new vehicle through an 800-mile endurance run from Cleveland to New York, a successful PR exercise that proved to the doubting public that his vehicle had stamina. It all became worthwhile when, on 24 March, 1898, Winton became the first man in the United States to sell an automobile commercially, with the sale of his car to Robert Allison of Pennsylvania. The automobiles began to fly out of the factory – or at least fly out as quickly as they could, given they were hand-made. That year Winton sold a further 21 vehicles and by 1899 over one hundred had been sold and his was the largest manufacturer of petrol-powered autos in the US. Further publicity was assured when both Reginald and Alfred Vanderbilt bought a Winton and more success followed when Dr Horatio Nelson Jackson made history when he became the first person to drive across America, in one of Winton’s vehicle. The journey, in 1903, took 64 days, including breakdowns, and necessitated a crew to hoist the Winton over difficult terrain. During his construction of the automobiles Winton patented over 100 designs. Bernard Golias in his book Famous but Forgotten: The Story of Alexander Winton writes that “people tend to equate Henry Ford with all the major automotive accomplishments, but if you take a look at the early patents, Winton held the groundbreakers in automotive development.” Despite his early success, Winton was unable to lead the race for long. New manufacturers were creeping up behind him, and his old-fashioned insistence on building by hand couldn’t match the capacity delivered by the new assembly lines set up by his competitors. These competitors had themselves often benefited from Winton knowledge first hand. One of Winton’s early customers was James Ward Packard, who went on to found the Packard Automobile Company after declaring himself dissatisfied with the Winton. But it was an unlucky job-seeker who proved the biggest challenge to Winton. Winton’s chief engineer, Leo Melanowski, had invited one Henry Ford to Cleveland with the possibility of work in the company. Winton was unimpressed with Ford and sent him away. Ford returned to Detroit where he continued working on his own designs, designs that quickly showed up the flaws in the Winton automobiles. By now competing manufacturers were expected to put their new modules through their paces in a series of endurance tests and races as they fought to prove their dominance over each other. In 1901 Winton lost a race to Henry Ford. However, Winton could claim some small victory, as prior to the race he had given Ford one of his new steering wheel mechanisms, expressing concern that someone would be killed if they used the Ford one. After losing the race Winton was determined to regain his crown, and so, in 1902, built the Winton Bullet, which set an unofficial land speed record of 70 miles per hour. His victory was short-lived, as this record was promptly defeated by another Ford. As the early part of the 20th century rolled on Winton lost out to the proliferation of new companies that were springing up around Detroit and elsewhere. By 1924 he had given up producing automobiles and had moved into marine and diesel engines. This company was subsumed into the giant General Motors in 1930 and eventually even this line declined. Today, Winton’s name is largely forgotten, buried beneath the weight of Ford and others, but his contribution to the development of the automobile was enormous. This Scottish lad-made-good may just about be able to claim that he joins a long list of famous Scottish inventors, like Kirkpatrick Macmillan, the disputed inventor of the bicycle in the 1890s) and Robert William Thomson, who invented the pneumatic tyre in 1845, without which Winton’s automobiles would never have made it out of the garage.We need your support. Please donate to The Caledonian Mercury
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