Chicago

Chicago Motor Vehicle Company was organized in 1895 from a carriage-building background, with offices in Chicago and manufacturing at Harvey, Illinois. Contrary to an easy confusion with the many electric-vehicle ventures active in Chicago, its documented vehicles were gasoline powered. The company entered an automobile in the November 1895 Chicago Times-Herald contest, but surviving summaries do not preserve enough technical detail or a dependable factory model name; the catalog therefore identifies it transparently as the Times-Herald Contest Car. By the 1900 Inter Ocean Automobile Exhibition the company displayed several gasoline vehicles and emphasized a common motor chassis that could accept interchangeable passenger and commercial bodies. W. R. Donaldson, listed as president by 1899, steered the business increasingly toward commercial vehicles. No surviving accessible catalog recovers all body names, engine variants, prices or chassis numbers, so one Interchangeable-Body Gasoline Chassis family accounts for that range rather than fabricating editions. William O. Worth and Henry R. Kellogg were among the principals, and the company also built approximately fifteen Worth-badged passenger vehicles from 1899 to 1901. Those are separately cataloged under Worth because contemporary and museum evidence treats Worth as the make. A Worth-traction-drive rail motor assembled in 1903–04 for the Tabor & Northern reportedly carried twenty passengers, used a 20–25 hp engine, weighed under four tons and reached about 25 mph; it is historical industrial output, not a road automobile model. Bankruptcy ended the company in 1904. Chicago Motor Vehicle Company is distinct from Woods Motor Vehicle Company, Chicago Electric Vehicle Company, Chicago Automobile Manufacturing Company's Chicago Steamer, Chicago Electric Motor Car Company, Chicago Cyclecar Company and Chicago Motor Buggy/Black.

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