About the marque
- Founded
- 1899 – 1910
- Country
- Latvia
Baltic German entrepreneur Alexander Leutner founded a Riga bicycle workshop in 1886 and developed it into the Russian Empire's largest cycle factory. Powered-vehicle experiments began in 1899, followed by Leutner-branded automobiles on locally built chassis with wooden bodies and imported French or German engines. The 3.5 HP gained awards and publicity at Riga's 1901 anniversary exhibition, while later advertisements listed 6, 8 and 12 hp passenger cars plus commercial vehicles. High component tariffs and low scale limited competitiveness; vehicle building faded around 1910 before the factory was evacuated to Kharkiv during the First World War.
Text adapted from “Leutner” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗