Clarkmobile

Clarkmobile was the automobile marque of the Clarkmobile Company of Lansing, Michigan. Frank G. Clark had worked on a prototype for roughly two years before the company was organized in April 1902 with $50,000 capital. A. C. Stebbins served as president, H. E. Thomas as vice-president, and Clark as secretary, treasurer and general manager. Clark's carriage concern had previously supplied the body for Ransom E. Olds's first test car, placing the venture within Lansing's formative automobile industry, but that Olds prototype was not a Clarkmobile. The production Clarkmobile appeared publicly in spring 1903. Its sole documented marketed family was an open runabout seating two or three. A water-cooled 7 hp single-cylinder four-stroke engine sat beneath the seat and drove the rear axle by shaft through a two-speed Upton planetary transmission with reverse. The hooded nose was a luggage compartment. The 72-inch wheelbase chassis weighed about 1,100 lb, used wooden wheels and Dunlop tires, and cost $750. Wheel steering, shaft drive and the conventional-looking hood were noteworthy when tillers and chain drive remained common. Advertising and newspaper coverage called it the 'Unbreakable Clarkmobile' after a demonstration accident. A 1950 Lansing retrospective says an initial two-cylinder experimental design quickly yielded to the single and estimates about one hundred automobiles, but no factory serial list, annual output split or survivor register substantiates an exact count; another museum-history item mentions three Lansing-built water-cooled Clarkmobiles held by New-Way, probably leftover chassis. Production ran only during 1903–04. In January 1905 the concern reorganized as New Way Motor Company, capitalized at $100,000 to manufacture air-cooled gasoline engines. Clark departed for Deere-Clark, which acquired automobile tools and machinery, and later participated in other companies including Furgason; those Clark-, truck- and successor-badged vehicles are not Clarkmobile models. Clarkmobile is also distinct from unrelated Clark automobiles built in Illinois, Massachusetts, Philadelphia and Indiana, and from Clark Electric, Clark-Hatfield and Clark-Norwalk. One Runabout row accounts for its complete defensible production range; the experimental two-cylinder car remains historical context rather than a fabricated second series.

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