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The Cole Motor Car Company1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Howard R. DeLancy
Howard R. DeLancy
Affiliation:
The Ohio Oil Company
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Abstract

J.J Cole, of Indianapolis, was one of the small group of entrepreneurs who successfully passed from carriage manufacture to automobile assembly. His initial success in the new field derived from technical competence, style consciousness, and marketing ability. These three attributes were not, however, subsequently exercized with equal and consistent effectiveness, and Cole, the talented individualist, did not survive the era of integration and combination in the 1920's. His firm passed from the scene, not as a bankrupt but as a typical founder-dominated organization that seemingly spent its energies in surviving one major transition and was unwilling or unable to face up to another.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1956 , pp. 260 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1956

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References

2 Since most of the information in this article was derived from internal records, no specific citations are given. The Cole family granted the author complete access to the remaining records of the Cole Motor Car Company. These records include the minutes of the meetings of directors and stockholders of the Gates-Osborne Carriage Company, the Cole Carriage Company, and the Cole Motor Car Company; the accounting statements of the Cole Motor Car Company from 1911 to 1925 as certified by Price, Waterhouse and Company; a limited correspondence file of J. J. Cole; advertising material and parts lists of the Motor Car Company; issues of the Cole Bulletin, a monthly magazine of the Cole Motor Car Company; and the Cole scrapbook, a collection of newspaper and magazine articles, many of which were not identifiable. In addition, the author employed many other newspaper and magazine articles, and interviewed and corresponded with a number of persons who had been associated with the company.

3 The amount of this loan is not known, but probably was not large since it was common practice at the time for an automobile assembler to manage his operations in such a way that he could put together and sell his automobiles in time to meet suppliers' requests for payment for the components that went into the machine. A reasonable estimate would be that the Firestone loan was between $5,000 and $10,000.

4 The other companies involved in the merger were Inter-State Motor Company of Muncie, Indiana; Warner Gear Company; Peru Auto Parts; Logansport Castings Company; Western Drop Forge; Hoosier Auto Parts; Ruetener Motor Company; Glascock Bros. Mfg. Company.