Deal

Deal automobiles grew from Jacob J. Deal's long-established Jonesville, Michigan wagon and carriage business. Deal opened a blacksmith shop in 1857 or 1858, moved into full-time wagon, buggy, cart and sleigh manufacture in 1865, and brought his son George Varnum Deal into partnership as J. J. Deal & Son in 1891. George became the automobile program's designer and driving force. When Jacob retired in 1908, the parent concern became the Deal Buggy Company while passenger vehicles were marketed through the Deal Motor Vehicle Company. George died unexpectedly in November 1908, after which Omar Dickerson managed operations. The Model S was announced or catalogued in 1908, but National Register-derived factory history says the first six cars based on George's designs were completed in 1909. Its carriage ancestry remained visible in 37-inch artillery wheels and two-inch solid-rubber tires, yet it used a water-cooled four-cylinder engine, two-speed planetary transmission, I-beam front axle and semi-floating rear axle. The four-seat runabout cost $950 in a 1910 factory advertisement. For 1911 Deal offered the shorter-wheelbase Model C, described variously as a four-seat Surrey or five-passenger pleasure and business runabout, and the longer five-passenger Model R touring car. The Model R cost $1,250 and included windshield and speedometer. These body/seating conflicts are disclosed rather than turned into extra cars. No reliable total, chassis ledger or model allocation survives; the six-car initial batch is not assumed to be total production. Early Autobuggies and suggestions of customer motorized delivery wagons remain experimental company prehistory because no named, specified series is known. Automobile manufacture ended in 1911, while the carriage concern continued until 1915 and the factory later passed to Universal Body Company. Those later business dates do not extend the marque. Three rows—Models S, C and R—exhaust the catalogued passenger range. Deal is not the similarly named Dale, a modern dealer or a geographic name.

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