Elcar and Pratt Automobiles

Book excerpt: A surprisingly little-known marque today, Elcar once ranked among the finest vehicles on American roads. Built to exacting standards in Elkhart, Indiana, an Elcar could compete head-to-head on the basis of performance, quality, or price with the products of much larger manufacturers. Ultimately done in by weak distribution and the ravages of the Depression, Elcar today stands as an example of an ambitious company that transformed itself, successfully if temporarily, from a maker of buggies and harnesses into a respected car manufacturer in the early days of the automotive age. This remarkably exhaustive history, researched over several decades from all available sources, including interviews with former Elcar employees, details all Elcar models and the Pratt vehicles that preceded them, as well as the personalities behind the cars. Extensive appendices provide a complete model history, with specifications; a full corporate chronology; an illustrated accounting of all Elcars and Pratts known to survive whole or in part today; a roster of company employees; a descriptive list of all ads and brochures ever produced by the company; and a wealth of other data that can be found nowhere else. Lavishly illustrated and surpassingly thorough, this book is a well of information on a significant but forgotten line of automobiles.