Cutting

Cutting was an American automobile marque built in Jackson, Michigan by the Clarke-Carter Automobile Company from 1909 through 1912 and, after reorganization, by the Cutting Motor Car Company in 1913. Period and reference sources vary between Clarke-Carter and Clark-Carter; Indianapolis Motor Speedway records the entrant as Clark-Carter, while manufacturer references generally use Clarke-Carter. Horatio E. Clarke and Wedworth W. Carter organized the concern in 1909, with Clarke as president and Carter as secretary-treasurer. Chief engineer Charles Cutting designed the cars and supplied the marque name. Production is reported to have begun late in 1909, but the first defensible public model identity is the 1910 Model A-40, so company inception and model year are not conflated. The concern occupied the Jackson premises previously used for the expensive C.V.I. automobile. C.V.I. remains a separate 1907–08 marque and is not turned into an early Cutting model. Cutting was an assembled automobile in the period sense: the small plant bought important components rather than manufacturing every part. Sources name Milwaukee, Model and Wisconsin among four-cylinder engine suppliers, but none of the accessible records securely maps a supplier to each model code. The catalog therefore records engine architecture, bore, stroke and displacement where period tables support them without inventing supplier assignments. The 1910 A-40 used a 283.7-cu-in four on a 117-inch chassis and was offered as a tourabout or touring car. A Detroit Public Library photograph identifies a Cutting '40' participating in the 1910 Glidden Tour, direct evidence that the opening car was more than a paper announcement. The 1911 program expanded dramatically. The smaller two-seat A-30 roadster had a 220.9-cu-in four and 115-inch wheelbase. B-40, C-50, D-50 and E-50 shared the 283.7-cu-in, 117-inch 40/50 mechanical series but distinguished conventional touring, fore-door and torpedo coachwork and advertised ratings. The large F-60 touring and G-60 torpedo touring identities used a 389.9-cu-in T-head four and 122-inch chassis. The Automobile's 5 January 1911 tables, preserved through the Classic Car Database and Horseless Carriage Foundation, group these lettered models into 30, 40/50 and 60 mechanical series. They record $1,100 for the 30 roadster, two unassigned 40/50 touring rows at $1,350 and $1,650, and $2,250 for the 60 touring car. Because the surviving table does not map those middle prices to B, C, D or E, the individual records do not pretend it does. The same principle controls horsepower: commercial model ratings of roughly 30–60 hp coexist with lower ALAM calculated ratings and are never treated as contradictory brake-horsepower tests. Cutting also used competition to build its reputation. Indianapolis Motor Speedway's official 1911 result places Ernest Delaney's Clarke-Carter-entered Cutting 23rd, correcting secondary claims that it finished in the top fifteen. In 1912 Bob Burman qualified a Cutting and was classified 12th after a tire-related accident late in the race, completing 156 laps in the official result. Race cars and passenger models are related history, but no evidence securely identifies the competition chassis as one of the retail letter codes, so no speculative racer model is added. For 1912 Cutting reorganized its bodies around an A30 mechanical series with a 251.3-cu-in L-head four, force-feed lubrication, dual ignition and a 116-inch wheelbase, plus a T55 high-power series with a 389.9-cu-in T-head four. The six marketed identities were A-30 Torpedo Roadster, D-35 and D-40 Fore-Door Tourings, F-60 seven-seat Torpedo Touring, T-35 five-seat Torpedo Touring and T-55 five-seat Torpedo Touring. A period 28 December 1911 classified advertisement directly names the new 1912 Model T-35 and promises 1 April delivery, independent support for a designation that otherwise disappears when the bodies are collapsed into mechanical series. The 4 January 1912 tables price the A30 roadster at $1,200, A30-series touring bodies at $1,250 and T55 at $1,850. They give T55 a 116-inch wheelbase, whereas later compiled model tables report 315 or 320 cm for F-60 and T-55. That unresolved conflict is disclosed in the model records; a single convenient value is not silently imposed on F-60. HCFI's archive inventory includes a parts list catalogued in 1913 for Model T-55, but a service-publication date alone does not prove a separately marketed 1913 T-55. The evidenced final 1913 range instead consists of A-40 two-seat roadster/runabout and B-40 five-seat touring car. Motor Age-derived data give both a 251.3-cu-in L-head four, 120-inch wheelbase, pressure lubrication, dual ignition, pump cooling, disc clutch and $1,475 price. The company changed its name to Cutting Motor Car Company for this last season. Secondary histories consistently describe chronic undercapitalization compounded by expansion. One later New Zealand club history reports that 100 cars were shipped there in early 1912 and that the death of the president and major stockholder in early 1913 triggered creditor pressure and receivership; without a recovered shipping manifest or corporate filing, those details remain attributed reports rather than a production total. Standard histories put liabilities above $350,000 and say the assets were sold in October 1913 to Louis C. Erbes for $30,000 plus assumption of two mortgages. A further claim that Erbes sold 300 completed Cuttings in Iowa cannot be reconciled to a chassis ledger and is not used as output. Erbes later built L.C.E. automobiles in Waterloo, Iowa; L.C.E., Bull Moose-Cutting and any cars assembled after the Jackson asset sale are separate identities unless they actually carried Cutting branding. No factory serial ledger, annual output statement, model allocation or reliable survivor census has been recovered. Sixteen year-qualified marketed identities therefore exhaust the defensible 1910–13 Cutting passenger-car range: one in 1910, seven in 1911, six in 1912 and two in 1913. They preserve factory model codes while sharing period-proven mechanical data, avoid duplicating bodies as imaginary powertrains, and exclude the earlier C.V.I., later L.C.E., racing specials without retail codes and unrelated modern businesses such as Cutting Edge trailers.

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