Motorette (Kelsey)

Motorette was the production automobile badge of Cadwallader Washburn Kelsey's C. W. Kelsey Manufacturing Company. After his expensive 1910 Spartan prototype failed the low-cost objective, Kelsey returned to the two-front/one-rear-wheel architecture he and Sheldon Tilney had explored in the 1890s. The Motorette was presented at New York's Grand Central Palace on New Year's Eve 1910 and entered series production in Hartford in 1911. Its pressed-steel chassis carried two occupants, with tiller steering at the right and a horizontally opposed twin driving the single rear wheel. The initial air-cooled two-stroke overheated during Mount Washington testing, so Kelsey introduced thermosiphon water cooling and mounted the radiator behind the seats. Period and surviving-car specifications give nominal 10 hp but conflict between about 57 and 72.2 cubic inches. A two-speed planetary transmission with reverse, shaft/roller-chain final arrangements described differently by sources, front full-elliptic springs, rear cantilever or quarter-elliptic springs and a brake on the rear wheel formed the simple drivetrain. Early cornering roll led Kelsey to patent a transverse spring stabilizer—an early anti-sway/anti-roll bar. At about 700 lb, on a 74-inch wheelbase and with roughly 25 mph published speed, Model M sold for $385 with a one-year guarantee. A 1911 factory-to-San-Francisco journey taking February through August demonstrated durability, while sales reached Canada, Denmark, Mexico and Japan. The 1912 catalog renamed the runabout Model A and added Model L Convertible Delivery and Model N Light Delivery. Seeking lower engine cost, Kelsey contracted Lycoming amid labor conflict. Returned cars reportedly contained roughly half a cup of sand in their crankcases; historians present deliberate sabotage by strikers as a possibility rather than a judicially proven fact. Failures under warranty devastated reputation and forced receivership. Kelsey changed suppliers and reportedly tried four-stroke and later water-cooled engines. The shorter 72-inch Model M-1 runabout and R-1 autorickshaw—developed particularly for Japan—appear for 1913–14, although volume production effectively ended in September 1913 and 1914 represents the final offered/development range. An Edison-associated electric-car plan and a four-cylinder four-wheel cyclecar proposal never became production vehicles. Kelsey later estimated 199 Motorettes delivered, while secondary sources round the total to about 200 or 210; the catalog records the conflict rather than assigning one exact total to each model. Six rows exhaust the named model range. The 1920–24 Kelsey marque from the separate Newark/Belleville Kelsey Motor Company is a later lineage and not duplicated here, while unrelated products called Motorette remain distinct.

Text adapted from “Motorette (Kelsey)” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗