Covert

Covert is the Lockport, New York automobile marque created around the work of Byron V. Covert, not the modern Texas dealer group, an adjective, or any unrelated company bearing the surname. Local history traces Covert's bicycle repair and manufacturing work in Lockport to 1891, but the automobile chronology begins with a disputed steam project around 1901. Georgano-derived references describe a light twin-cylinder, chain-driven steam runabout in a 1901 range. A Kimes-derived account instead says Covert developed the steam car and organized to manufacture it in 1902, then abandoned the plan; the Royal Automobile Club says only that he began by building a steam car. No contemporary advertisement, customer delivery, serial record or production survivor for a steam Covert has been recovered. It is therefore represented as an experimental predecessor, never as proven series output. Documented marketed production begins in 1902. Scientific American advertisements offered the $600 Covert Motorette from B. V. Covert & Co. of Lockport. The tiny two-seat runabout weighed about 350 lb, used a horizontal 3 hp single beneath the seat, an air-cooled cylinder with water-cooled head, two forward speeds without reverse, tiller steering, wire wheels, full-elliptic springs and twin-chain final drive on a 62-inch wheelbase. Covert reduced its price to $500 late in 1902. Surviving engine and car numbers in the 50s and 80s are not a production total. The new Chainless was announced in November 1902 and reached the market and New York automobile show in early 1903. It was still a two-seat runabout despite the Light Touring Car description, but its front vertical 5 hp single, wheel steering, reverse, enclosed two-speed gearbox, propeller shaft and bevel final drive were a much more conventional layout. Period sources quote roughly 600–625 lb, 60- or 62-inch wheelbases, 6–30 mph and $750; their disagreements are retained rather than silently harmonized. A reorganization followed. Contemporary evidence says Covert Motor Vehicle Company succeeded B. V. Covert & Co. and was capitalized at $100,000; a late-1903 advertisement already gives Rochester as the corporate address and Lockport as the factory, while standard histories round the name change to 1904. The 1904 Chainless was not merely the 1903 specification repeated. It had a larger body and longer chassis, angle-iron frame, artillery wheels, honeycomb radiator, about 6–6½ hp and roughly 740–750 lb weight. Standard references later call it Model A, although verified period copy continues to use Chainless, Covert and Runabout. Conflicting 68- and 72-inch wheelbases and 4 x 4¼ versus 4 x 4½ inch cylinder dimensions remain disclosed. A 6 hp Chainless nicknamed The Baby completed the 1904 Buffalo–St. Louis reliability tour as the only finisher in its class. The $750 price fell to $650 for 1905. Period advertising directly proves the generation in 1904–05 and New Zealand advertising supports continued availability in 1907; official histories end car production that year, while an unverified possibility of final assembly in early 1908 is not promoted to a catalog year. Covert also tried the upper market. Its five-passenger, four-cylinder Touring Car, later called Model B or 20/24 HP, used an approximately 3.7-litre vertical four, three-speed sliding gearbox, shaft drive, 94-inch wheelbase and 1,800 lb chassis. It was introduced with the 1904 program, period-specified in 1905 and dropped after that year as undercapitalization forced the company back to one small passenger line. The often-repeated four-seat description conflicts with the period five-passenger listing. A final discovery broadens the range beyond passenger cars: MoToR's 1907 directory lists a Covert Commercial Car rated 12 hp, priced at $1,000 and carrying 1,000 lb in a screen-sided express body. It was a distinct 1,500 lb, 84-inch-wheelbase vehicle with a water-cooled opposed twin under the seat, full-elliptic springs, sliding gearbox and shaft/bevel drive, not a delivery body invented from the single-cylinder Chainless. It was still advertised in December 1907. The resulting catalog has six evidence-bounded identities: the disputed experimental steam runabout, Motorette, separate 1903 and 1904 Chainless generations, four-cylinder Touring Car and opposed-twin Commercial Car. Covert-Jackson and Jackson-Covert were British importer/market names used by R. Reynold Jackson for American-built Coverts, not a British manufacturer or additional model. A surviving 1902 Motorette with that marketing supports the alias without multiplying output. Automobile manufacture ended in 1907, but the legal company did not instantly become Covert Gear. Period advertisements show Covert Motor Vehicle Company selling transmission axles and other components under its existing name from 1909 through 1915, with a Detroit sales office by 1912. An April 1916 incorporation notice records the new $1 million Covert Gear Company as formed to take over the older company's business. Covert Gear then expanded transmission, clutch and control production at Lockport and Detroit, including wartime contracts. Later component-industry reorganizations do not revive the Covert car marque. Byron Covert's participation in Harrison Radiator, his later Menard highwheeler work, Covert transmissions in other makers' vehicles and Covert Gear products all remain related history rather than Covert automobile models. No trustworthy factory production total exists for any Covert vehicle or for the marque as a whole.

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