Church-Field

Austin Church and H. George Field founded Church-Field Motor Company in 1911 at Sibley, Michigan, now part of Trenton. Production began in 1912 under the Church-Field badge, and the company launched its electric automobile publicly at the Detroit Automobile Show in January. The range used one low underslung chassis with a 100-inch (2,540 mm) wheelbase. An unusual control system paired a two-speed planetary gearbox with ten electrically selected controller positions, creating twenty effective speed or ratio ranges. The motor manufacturer, voltage, horsepower, battery maker, cell chemistry, capacity, claimed driving range, charging time and final-drive arrangement are not preserved in accessible references. Two materially different catalog bodies are documented and therefore receive separate rows. The $2,300 Roadster seated two in an open body. The $2,800 Coupé seated five in an aluminium body whose front hood resembled contemporary Renault gasoline cars despite the electric drivetrain. Sources give a maximum speed range of about 40–50 km/h (25–31 mph), without assigning it to one body. Financial problems closed the factory in September 1913, and conventional production ended that year. Two references allow that a few vehicles may subsequently have been assembled by hand from remaining parts, but neither dates nor counts them; the database does not extend production on speculation. The legal company lingered until May 1915, when its remaining assets sold for only $600. Production and sales are consistently described as minimal, but no exact total, annual/body split, serial ledger or confirmed survivor is published. Church-Field is distinct from the 1902–04 Church Manufacturing Company and Lenawee automobile, the 1911–13 Church Motor Car Company of Chicago, religious institutions and geographic fields. Two rows account for its complete advertised automobile range.

Text adapted from “Church-Field” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗