DAC

DAC was the automobile marque of the Detroit Air-Cooled Car Company, a brief 1922–23 Michigan venture that should not be confused with Henry Ford's 1899 Detroit Automobile Company or the later Romanian DAC truck marque. Automobile dealer W. J. Doughty organized the concern around an unconventional lightweight car designed by engineer G. R. Tremolada. Period company material sometimes spells the marque D.A.C. and the designer Tremolada; later summaries vary the spelling to Tremolda. The car debuted at the Detroit Automobile Show in early 1922, where an advertisement directed visitors to booth 61 and described it as the car inaugurating a new era in design. The first headquarters were at 3745 Cass Avenue in Detroit. Corporate roles shifted as the company sought production capital: contemporary promotions name C. H. Bennett as president and general manager and list Doughty, Tremolada, August Gieseler, Frank Sanders and John McArthur among its officers or directors. Their published biographies and sweeping claims about dealer demand were part of a stock-selling campaign and are not treated as proof of output. The defining product was called the Detroit Air-Cooled Car, D.A.C. Twin-Three or simply Twin-Three. It was one mechanical platform on a 115-inch wheelbase, offered as a five-passenger open phaeton or touring car, four-passenger coupe and five-passenger sedan. Local historical writing calls these three models, but no distinct series name, chassis code or powertrain separates them. The catalog consequently preserves all three factory body configurations in a single Twin-Three Air-Cooled Six row rather than tripling one chassis into imaginary mechanical models. The engine was genuinely unusual. Tremolada arranged six individually cast cylinders as two banks of three at a narrow 30-degree angle. A May 1922 report gives 2 7/8-inch bore and 4-inch stroke, calculating to 155.9 cubic inches or approximately 2,554 cc. Its new overhead-valve arrangement worked by direct pull and eliminated exposed rocker arms. More than twenty cooling fins surrounded each cylinder, while a fan and shaped chutes directed air around them. Contemporary specifications add aluminum pistons and crankcase, force-feed constant-pressure lubrication and electric starting. The dry-plate clutch fed a selective three-speed gearbox with reverse and rear-wheel drive. Normal stopping used a transmission brake; a separate emergency brake acted on the rear wheels. A combined control at the steering wheel operated throttle and horn, an oddity emphasized in descriptions of the car. Detroit laboratory testing reported 31.2 horsepower at 2,600 rpm. Factory advertising rounded that to 32 horsepower at 2,700 rpm. The same May report measured 27 miles per gallon at 25 mph and 24 mpg at 35 mph, while show advertising claimed 30 mpg. Those figures remain period tests and claims, not modern standardized economy ratings. The May specification gives 1,740 pounds for the complete car; an earlier January advertisement said 1,700 pounds. A June report says the V6 itself weighed 191 pounds. The later, better specified 1,740-pound state is represented as 789 kg, with the early figure disclosed rather than averaged. The five-passenger phaeton was advertised at $1,250 FOB Detroit. Contemporary summaries give $1,700 for the coupe and $1,750 for the sedan. Cord tires on demountable straight-side rims, pressure lubrication and an electric starter reinforced the company's pitch that the car combined low weight with conventional usability. No verified top speed or trustworthy fuel-capacity figure has been recovered; a later transcription's twelve-pound fuel-capacity wording is implausible and is not promoted into structured data. Production plans repeatedly outran production. Contemporary publicity claimed roughly one hundred dealers, orders for thousands of cars, proposed first-year capacity of 5,000 or 10,000 cars and eventually fifty cars per day. These were forward-looking promotional statements. Sources say a small number of cars were assembled at Detroit, after which the company acquired a former motor-vehicle factory in Wayne late in 1922 and shifted its offices and manufacturing there in 1923. Wayne local history identifies the site as the abandoned Swift factory, records that some cars were made and dealer orders existed, but says insufficient stock capital caused the concern to fold within a year. It also reports that the factory, blueprints, designs and tooling later burned and that no surviving DAC car has surfaced beyond photographs. Exact output remains disputed. One general history estimates around one hundred cars; another gives 22 in 1922 and 150 in 1923, or 172 total. Without a chassis ledger, registration sequence or factory annual statement, the catalog records only that production was very small and does not select a falsely precise total. The 17-page 1922 Twin-Three factory brochure preserved by the Historical Car Catalogs Foundation confirms that substantial sales literature existed, though its scans require repository membership. Operations ended during 1923. One catalog row therefore exhausts the defensible DAC range: the 1922–23 Twin-Three Air-Cooled Six with its touring/phaeton, coupe and sedan bodies, exact known period specifications, competing production estimates and promotional claims clearly separated.

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