Caloric

Caloric was the automobile badge used in 1903–04 by the Chicago Motocycle Company founded by Charles Dickinson, L. F. Douglass and Henry B. Babson. It succeeded the company's one-year Chicago-badged car. The name referred to heat and was particularly apt because the unusual proprietary engine required its cylinder head to be heated red hot with a blowtorch before starting. Contemporary technical description says a fuel-and-air charge was admitted and compressed in the cooler lower part of the cylinder, transferred to the hot end for ignition, and exhausted while a new charge entered. Three catalog families are documented. Two open runabouts shared a 66-inch (approximately 1,680 mm) wheelbase and two-cylinder engines rated respectively 4½ and 6½ hp. An enclosed coupé used a three-cylinder 9 hp engine; no dependable wheelbase is preserved for it. Accessible summaries disagree slightly in rounded power descriptions, sometimes calling the runabout engine 4 hp and an optional three-cylinder 6 hp, but the more granular model table consistently records 4½, 6½ and 9 hp, which the catalog follows while disclosing the evidence limits. No displacement, bore/stroke, cooling details, exact transmission, dimensions beyond runabout wheelbase, weights, seating, prices, annual revisions, production totals or survivors are securely documented. In August 1904 the maker combined with Auto Motor Cycle Company, announced an end to Caloric car production and briefly used the Fostler badge in 1905 before concentrating on boat engines. Caloric is unrelated to hot-air engines and products from other companies sharing the generic thermodynamic term. Three rows account for the complete defensible Caloric range.

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