The SAE contingent met automakers and reached agreements. The Americans and Europeans had a mutual interest in the automobile industry. A critical global trade agreement Champion pushed for with success was to keep metric threads on spark plugs fastening into cylinder combustion chambers. He had always produced spark plugs with metric threads, standard on the continent—and in Cadillacs and the rest of GM’s cars. Of the more than two thousand nuts and bolts holding American cars together, only spark plugs had metric threads—a standard that continues today, although with globalization American threading has been accepted.
The excursion broadened Champion’s exposure as an auto industry ambassador on both sides of the Atlantic. He and Elise met automaker Frederick Duesenberg of Indianapolis. Albert’s friendship with Frederick would later take them back to France together, with Frederick’s brother Augie, and advance their careers as well as the reputation of American cars. Albert joined the SAE and remained a member for the rest of his life. He would regularly attend annual meetings and fill support roles in the society.
In December 1911 the SAE’s mission concluded and it was time to go back home. The group sailed from Southampton to New York on the English White Star ocean liner Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic. The Olympic represented the ultimate in comfort and luxury, with a lavish grand staircase identical to the one on the Titanic. In 1980, when the organization celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary, leaders looked back on its first international meeting from the perspective of the precarious circumstances behind the return.96 If the trip had taken place early the next year, then Champion, Mott, Duesenberg, Stutz, and colleagues could have boarded the Titanic on its tragic voyage to New York. “Had the brains and ability of the SAE delegation to Europe been swallowed by the Icy Atlantic, the SAE could conceivably have suffered a premature death at the age of six!”97
Louis Chevrolet set up shop in the first weeks of 1911 on the second floor of a building in Detroit on Grand River Avenue.98 He had funding from Durant. Louis’s shop had ample space. He had the tools and time available to do the job right. Everything was going his way. However, he had no idea how perplexing life would be with The Man.
What appealed most to Durant about Chevrolet was his name, as much for the fame that Louis’s motorsport career had achieved as for its phonetic spelling. Durant had an affinity for finding something that could sell itself. To him the right name was as essential to sales as perfect pitch is to a musician. Chevrolet, with its phonetic spelling, in French or English, had the edge over David Buick’s name. Durant had worried that Buick could be mispronounced as Boo-ick,99 a potential sticking point. Buick cars sold well anyway. The road was wide open as far as the eye could see for a car named Chevrolet.
Louis Chevrolet hired designer and compatriot Etienne Planche, one of the forgotten pioneers of auto design. They had probably met in a Brooklyn motor shop when they were young and New York held a brief reign as America’s car capital.100 Planche went on to design a motorcycle engine and a racing car that carried his name, the Roebling-Planche. He left the East Coast to join Louis in Detroit.101
While the two Frenchman experimented to produce the light French car they agreed upon, The Man played his own game. He repeated his past. Durant bought the Flint Wagon Works, which years earlier had originally backed the Buick Motor Company. By now carriage companies were on their way out, but he needed a factory. This one on the west side of town fit his plan. He brought in men from the Buick Motor Company willing to follow him again to build a new car company, even if they had to step around wooden wagon wheels and whip sockets. Such bygone paraphernalia could be sold to bring in cash to build new auto trial products. The Man incorporated a new car company in July, followed by a second, called the Little Motor Company, after William Little, Durant’s general manager at Buick.
Louis Chevrolet and Etienne Planche built a full-sized four-door touring car. It had a blue body, electric headlights, three speeds, and low running boards resembling French cars. Louis deemed it worthy of his name and called it the Chevrolet Classic Six.
A story made the circuit around Detroit that Louis Chevrolet had tested one of his six-cylinder models by driving at four o’clock in the morning on a road on the outskirts of the city at 110 mph.102 Such speed may be an exaggeration, but the car went fast enough to please Louis, a connoisseur of speed. A vehicle that swift without a muffler at full throttle and that time of the morning was bound to attract attention. On the return to Detroit, he was stopped at a roadblock and arrested for speeding.103 A justice of the peace fined him $30—$5 for speeding and $25 for impersonating the famous race driver.104
Louis found the anecdote worth a laugh and told Durant. Any intended humor was lost on The Man. Durant’s concern was that the Chevrolet Classic Six would retail for $2,150—the price of a luxury car in an exclusive and small market already competitive with Cadillac, Packard, and other established marques. The smaller and less powered Little cost only $1,285—a price closer to what Durant needed if he was to succeed in getting back into the car game.
On November 3, 1911, Durant incorporated the Chevrolet Motor Company of Michigan, his third new auto company that year. The eponymous Louis Chevrolet was listed as an incorporator with two others on capital of $100,000. The following month, The Man boosted the Chevrolet Motor Company capitalization to $2.5 million through stock sales. Louis was not listed as an officer. Louis Chevrolet was dealt out of the car company bearing his name. Durant compensated Louis with one hundred shares of the stock issue.105
Louis Chevrolet was satisfied with building the car he wanted, one worthy of the name Chevrolet. There were photo ops. Louis standing on the sidewalk next to a polished Chevrolet parked at the curb, the Chevrolet name spelled in cursive along the hood, the top folded down, The Man’s grown son, Cliff Durant, ensconced behind the steering wheel next to Suzanne Chevrolet. She looked chic in a driving hat that covered her hair so it wouldn’t get mussed in the wind.
The photo marked the high point for Louis. He had served his purpose to Durant, and he was on his way out. Louis Chevrolet and Billy Durant had different tastes. Louis wanted a stylish luxury car capable of going fast enough to get the driver arrested. The Man was trying to figure out how to produce a cheap car to challenge Henry Ford’s industry-leading Model T. The Chevrolet Classic Six auto went into production. Over the year 1912, Chevrolet cars sold modestly.106 The next year Louis and Suzanne shipped out with their two sons for an extended trip to France.107 They were gone long enough for The Man to incorporate more companies and merge some in pursuit of creating a mid-size car that cost less than the Chevrolet Six and could sell in big numbers. When Louis returned to Detroit, he discovered that his beloved Chevrolet Six had been discontinued. The Man had modified the Little Motor Car Company’s auto, which was being sold as a low-cost Chevrolet.108
Louis was devastated. As if he had not endured enough humiliation with his dream car taken away from him, each time he talked with Durant, tension smoldered between them over Louis’s cigarettes. The Man insisted that a gentleman carmaker should smoke cigars. Louis, like Albert Champion, came from the French working class. They had mustaches and wore flat wool caps. Durant was clean-shaven and wore felt hats. Louis smoked cigarettes and was not about to change his habit. But The Man would not let up on Louis; he persisted in attempting to persuade Louis to smoke cigars.
Louis was a tender and loving family man.109 Nevertheless, Durant’s action caused him to erupt in anger. “I sold you my car and I sold you my name, but I’m not going to sell myself to you,” he bellowed. “I’m going to smoke my cigarettes as much as I want. And I’m getting out.”110
By the end of 1913, the two men parted company. Embittered, Louis sold all his shares of Chevrolet Motor Company stock—to Durant.111 He severed their relationship. (If he had held on to his shares, the stock would have made him a millionaire many times over. But no amount of money would change the way Louis felt about what Durant had done to him.)
The Man’s Chevrolet Motor Company introduced two new models built in Flint—the Royal Mail roadster, evoking a romantic English association, and the Baby Grand touring car.112 Both models were selling—for cash in the era before monthly payments were introduced—as fast as they were made. Durant now had a car company with a distinctive name and two models in the price range he wanted. All he needed was a catchy logo. He added the bow-tie badge to the Royal Mail and the Baby Grand, the first models to carry the Chevrolet bow tie. Now he was on track to regain control of General Motors.
Louis Chevrolet went back to what he knew best—racing. He planned to build a racecar. A successful one would prove reliability and Louis could adapt it as a passenger car.113 This time he would name his esteemed auto after the great French patriot and former Governor General of New France, Louis de Baude Frontenac. To Louis Chevrolet, Frontenac was exceptional. A portion of the land Frontenac had claimed for France in North America was sold in 1803 as the Louisiana Purchase to the United States for $15 million (worth $314 million in 2014). The territory contained all or portions of what became fifteen US states. Frontenac’s importance dwarfed that of his younger contemporary, Antoine Cadillac. Cadillac fell out of favor in the court of Louis XIV, was recalled back to Paris, and imprisoned briefly in the Bastille. Louis bet his future on an automobile named for Frontenac.
Louis had many friends and associates willing to back him. The first one to step up and offer to supply the capital he needed was Albert Champion.
Champion now had a plant of his own and employed hundreds. His Champion Ignition Company had moved into a two-story brick factory of more than thirty-three thousand feet of floor space at the corner of Harriet and Industrial Avenue, near the huge Buick complex.114 His enterprise had matured from a startup to a going concern. Moving into the building had merited a ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of the new entrance. Elise would have attended the gala.
He also had deep pockets. Beyond his salary as chief executive of the Champion Ignition Company, Champion received $500,000 ($12.5 million in 2014) a year on dividends from his interest in the company.115 Moreover, the US Patent Office in 1910 had issued him a patent for his insulator and conductor for electric currents, which were used in GM autos, resulting in a substantial annual royalty.116
In early 1914 Albert began sponsoring Louis’s new Frontenac Motor Car of Michigan at Louis’s shop on Grand River Avenue. They operated with the same arrangement Louis had in his early stages with Durant—underwriting without a corporate stake. Louis was conducting business as an individual. For the next year Albert paid the rent, utilities, material costs, and other expenses, and he also provided a basic salary for Louis, Etienne Planche as designer,117 and Arthur Chevrolet.118 Louis expected to introduce his Frontenac racecar in the 1915 season.
The Chevrolet family and the Champions dined together often at one another’s house, sometimes accompanied by De Guichard and Planche and their amours, making for raucous evenings. Albert noticed Suzanne Chevrolet, her long, dark hair, Gaulic poise.
Albert was experimenting with a new spark plug design, called the AC Titan Spark Plug. The latest high-speed racing engines increased cylinder pressure, which caused spark plugs to heat to a higher temperature and leak electricity, diminishing the plug’s explosion in the combustion chamber and reducing engine power. Albert devised a new process for manufacturing the spark plugs to allow for metal expansion in a hot plug, which kept the electricity intact and the plug operating at high efficiency.
The Champion Ignition Company in the spring of 1914, leading up to the Memorial Day Indy 500, made AC Titan plugs plentifully available for the cars and teams on the race circuit so that they could test how they would perform in high-powered racing engines. That Albert Champion was funding Louis Chevrolet, a respected racer, lent credibility to his AC Titan plugs.
Chevrolet made progress on his Frontenacs. He had designs for two different ultramodern engines and a Frontenac finished in time for the 1915 season.119 Arthur had two machines under construction.120 Louis finally appeared ready to introduce his racecar. Yet he would lose another year before he introduced his adored Frontenacs.
The delay, the abrupt breakup between Louis and Albert, and Louis’s sudden departure from Detroit was first accounted for by the late Griffith Borgeson,121 acclaimed by the Society of Automotive Engineers as one of the world’s preeminent automotive historians. Borgeson had interviewed more than one hundred people involved in the critical first third of the twentieth century, when the American auto industry was formed. He wrote his classic book The Golden Age of the American Racing Car, first published in 1966, with material based on the memories of the people who had made the history. Their recollections were checked and cross-checked. Borgeson noted that one day in early 1915 Louis was at work in Detroit when Albert visited Suzanne at home.
Albert must have become infatuated with her as he had been with French actress Olta de Kerman. He went to Suzanne with the intention of having an affair—and betraying Louis. Despite his considerable financial support and friendship with Louis, Albert risked everything. Suzanne spurned him. When Louis came home from work, she told her husband.
Louis exploded in rage. The following morning, Louis had fire in his eyes as he barged with bear-like strength through the door of his now ex-friend’s private office, fuming that he had been mortally wronged.122
Albert stood up from behind his desk and yelled back in French.
The confrontation escalated like wildfire. Louis, a head taller and fifty pounds heavier, attacked Champion with his fists. Office staff members were shocked at the sight of men in The Chief’s office throwing punches. Telephones crashed to the floor. Wooden trays holding reams of paper flew into the air and scattered documents all over the place. If the fight were a boxing match, ringside reporters would have scored it in favor of Louis, who beat Champion almost to death.123 He warned Champion never to cross his path again or he would finish him off.
Louis was so enraged that as fast as he could he relocated his family to Indianapolis. The city, now famous for its motor speedway and the Indy 500, had a lot to offer. He never returned to Michigan in Champion’s lifetime.
Elise always cared for Albert without hesitation. Yet there was a limit to what she would tolerate. His cruelty was threatening their marriage.
PROBABLY NO ONE BUSINESS OFFERS MORE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE YOUNG MAN TO RISE THAN THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY, YET MOST OF THE LARGE AUTOMOBILE FIRMS HAVE BEEN BUILT UP FROM A SMALL BEGINNING.
—AUTOMOBILE, 19091
Robert Stranahan had borrowed thousands of dollars from his brother Frank to jostle around on trains and sleep in hotels far away from his young wife as a traveling salesman from Boston calling on carmakers cropping up in the Midwest. It was all he could do to keep his Champion Spark Plug Company from going under. A trip to Toledo in the spring of 1910 changed all that.
There in the city abutting southern Michigan on the shore of Lake Erie, he offered his Champion spark plug samples to John Willys, a fast-rising captain of industry.2 Willys owned the Overland Automobile Company, headquartered in Indianapolis.3 He recently had moved his operation into a mammoth modern manufacturing campus of twenty-four buildings covering twelve acres in Toledo, ranking as one of America’s largest auto-producing plants.4 Robert had suggested to Willys that Champion spark plugs would improve the performance of Overlands.5 Willys agreed to buy the spark plugs, but on the condition that Robert relocate his business to Toledo to ensure uninterrupted delivery.6
While Robert had been busy with the Willys proposition, his brother Spencer, the former precocious schoolboy and all-round athlete, had surprised the family. Walking into their mother’s home in Brookline with blonde Marion Davenport at his side, he had announced, “I’ve been married, and this is my wife.”7 His bride was a pretty nineteen-year-old Boston nursing student from Portland, Maine. Afterward, the couple lived in Brookline. Spencer worked with Robert producing spark plugs in the Whittier Street shop in Roxbury
.
Then, as unexpectedly as he had married, Spencer died in January 1909 at twenty-four from meningitis.8 The close family was traumatized. So it was good news when Robert closed the deal with Willys. He was ready to leave Boston with his wife for a fresh start. Frank still had business pending in Boston, but he accompanied Robert to Toledo for a brief visit.
“We came to Toledo with spark plug manufacturing equipment loaded in two boxcars and saddled with a $22,000 debt ($548,000 in 2014),” Robert often recalled, to emphasize how he had worked his way up and overcome hard times.9 Two weeks passed before the machinery arrived by rail. He set up shop in downtown Toledo, on the second floor of a brick commercial structure over the Holmes Snow Flake Laundry.10 Doing business with Willys helped the Stranahans attract investors. The next month, the brothers reorganized the Champion Spark Plug Company as a Delaware corporation on $30,000 capital ($748,000 in 2014),11 with Robert as president and Frank as treasurer.12
Willys had captured widespread attention for his swift ascent,13 from practically nothing in two years to president of one America’s largest car companies—one that in 1910 appeared capable of challenging Ford and Buick, especially with Buick faltering that summer.14 John North Willys, called J. N. by his friends,15 was thirty-seven. He had pleasant features, appeared urbane in business suits, and radiated a salesman’s natural confident smile.
At the beginning of the decade Willys had been selling bicycles in Elmira, New York.16 After three years one of the bicycle companies in Indianapolis shifted to turning out cars—called Overland. Right away he realized how autos would overtake bicycles,17 the sales of which were already slumping. He put his considerable energy into selling Overlands as well as autos made by two other Indianapolis manufacturers. By 1909 he had moved to Indianapolis, had taken possession of the Overland plant, and had restructured the company. The cars were durable, eye-catching, and retailed for $1,200.18 They were so popular that Willys was deluged with more signed contracts and deposits for orders than he could fill.19 He needed a much larger factory—and right away, if his operation were to survive. The story of his rise read as though it were lifted from a fairy tale.20
The Fast Times of Albert Champion Page 32
