Technology and Culture

Many people thought comedian Jack Benny's Maxwell was a car for aged cheapskates. Anthony Yanik, noted automotive historian, puts the lie to this stereotype in his brief history of the car and the company. His version has famous racecar drivers Eddie Rickenbacker, Ray Harroun, and Barney Old-field blazing around racetracks in their Maxwells and pioneer automobile developers David Buick, Benjamin Briscoe, Walter Chrysler, and Hugh Chalmers interested in the company. Behind Maxwell lurked the house of Morgan and moneymen Anthony Brady and his son James.

Yanik deftly weaves several themes through his book, principally that Maxwell Motor Company was not a failure. It survived the vicissitudes of the early auto era and several receiverships to become the Chrysler Corporation, one of the big three. Maxwell's journey, however, was anything but linear. It began when Ransom E. Olds asked Briscoe, a manufacturer of cooling systems, to design a better radiator. Jonathan Maxwell, the engineering genius behind the company, presented a design for a new car to Briscoe and asked for financial support. Maxwell's auto featured a number of technological innovations: an under-the-hood motor, sliding-gear transmission, three-point suspension, a side door to the rear seat, and a thermosyphon cooling system of the sort that Henry Ford used later on his Model T. Early Maxwells were powered by two-cylinder motors that pumped eight horsepower to the rear wheels through a "propeller shaft" and universal joints.

Briscoe secured financing from J. P. Morgan and in 1904 chartered the Maxwell-Briscoe Motor Company. Two years later he introduced a four-cylinder motor, built a new plant in New Castle, Indiana, and leased at least [End Page 518] three others in the East. Cadwallader Kelsey, Maxwell's sales manager, entered Maxwells in races, hill climbs, and annual Glidden Tours. Sales soared, and Maxwell became one of the top four producers in the country. The 1907 recession convinced Briscoe that he needed a larger company, and he went on a merger binge. He tried to unite Buick, Ford, Olds, and Maxwell in 1908, only to fail when Ford demanded three million dollars in cash. Briscoe then tried to merge with Buick, and later Cadillac, General Motors, and Ford, all to no avail.

Finally, prodded by Brady, one of Maxwell's biggest investors, he merged with Brady's Columbia Motor Car Company, a small firm that built only expensive cars, to create the United States Motor Company in 1910. Maxwell was the only strong corporation in the fold, and USMwas in trouble almost from the first. Within two years Walter Flanders, a production expert who was the "F" in the EMF automobile, replaced Briscoe. In 1913 Maxwell purchased USM when it was liquidated. Flanders pared the company down, reduced the Maxwell lineup to just the Model 25, gained a few contracts during World War I, and was one of the top six producers in the country when he resigned to farm.

When Maxwell, like other auto manufacturers, was savaged by the 1919 recession, James Brady asked Walter Chrysler to sort out its financial problems. Chrysler was vice-president of Willys-Overland, a job he kept while at Maxwell, and on his own he hired a team of engineers to design a car to bear his name. Through some financial legerdemain William Crapo Durant ended up owning it and brought it out as the Flint. Chrysler had his team design another new auto that became the Chrysler Six that Maxwell offered in 1923 to rave reviews. The following year Maxwell's stockholders voted to rename the firm the Chrysler Corporation. The 1924 Maxwells were the last of the breed.

Yanik tells a good story, one that blends technological change and Maxwell's always-shifting financial situation. He shows that the firm was extraordinarily lucky in its leaders, who were equally adept at mechanics and manipulation. Written from a variety of primary and secondary sources, this first biography of the company serves...