The Stutz Motor Car Company was an American producer of high-end sports and luxury cars based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Production began in 1911 and ended in 1935.
Stutz was known as a producer of fast cars including America's first sports car and, from 1924, luxury cars for the rich and famous.
The brand was revived in 1968 under the aegis of the Stutz Motor Car of America and it unveiled a line of modern retro-look cars. Although the company is still in existence, sales of factory-produced vehicles ceased in 1995.
History
Ideal Motor Car Company, organized in June 1911 by Harry C. Stutz with his friend, Henry F Campbell, began building Stutz cars in Indianapolis in 1911. They set this business up after a car built by Stutz in under five weeks and entered in the name of his Stutz Auto Parts Co. was placed 11th in the Indianapolis 500 earning it the slogan "the car that made good in a day". Ideal built what amounted to copies of the racecar with added fenders and lights and sold them with the model name Stutz Bearcat, Bear Cat being the name of the actual racecar.
The Bearcat featured a Wisconsin brawny four-cylinder T-head engine with four valves per cylinder, one of the earliest multi-valve engines, matched with one of Harry Stutz's transaxles. Stutz Motor has also been credited with the development of "the underslung chassis," an invention that greatly enhanced the safety and cornering of motor vehicles and one that is still in use today. Stutz's "White Squadron" race team won the 1913 and 1915 national championships before withdrawing from racing in October 1915.
Stutz Motor Car Company of America
In June 1913 Ideal Motor Car Company changed its name to Stutz Motor Car Company (of Indiana) and Stutz Auto Parts Company (it manufactured Stutz's transaxle) was merged into it. To find new investment capital for expansion Stutz Motor Car Company (of Indiana) was sold in 1916 to Stutz Motor Car Company of America under an agreement with a consortium to list the specially organized holding company's stock on the New York Stock Exchange. As a part of the listing process, the number of cars produced and sold since 1912 was reported to potential investors: 1913, 759; 1914, 649; 1915, 1,079; 1916 (first six months) 874. Stutz, Campbell, Allan A. Ryan, and four others were directors. Stutz was president and Allan A. Ryan vice-president.
Harry Stutz left Stutz Motor on July 1, 1919, and together with Henry Campbell established the H. C. S. Motor Car Company and Stutz Fire Apparatus Company.
Allan Aloysius Ryan (1880–1940), father of Allan A. Ryan Jr., was left in control of Stutz Motor. Ryan Sr., and friends attempted stock manipulation which in April 1920 proved disastrous. Stutz Motor was delisted. The Stutz Motor corner was the last publicly detected intentional corner on the New York Stock Exchange. Ryan Sr., was bankrupt in August 1922 as well as disinherited by his father, Thomas Fortune Ryan. Meanwhile, two friends of Thomas Fortune Ryan found themselves with large parcels of Stutz stock, Charles Michael Schwab and Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer Jr. (1881–1937), president of Chase National Bank.
The new owners brought in Frederick Ewan Moskowics, formerly of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, Marmon, and Franklin, in 1923. Moskowics quickly refocused the company as a developer of safety cars, a recurring theme in the auto industry. In the case of Stutz, the car featured safety glass, a low center of gravity for better handling, and a hill-holding transmission called "Noback". A significant advance was the 1931 DOHC 32-valve in-line 8 called the "DV32" (DV for 'dual valve'). This was during the so-called "cylinders race" of the early 1930s when makers of some expensive cars were rushing to produce multi-cylinder engines. However, Stutz continued its performance heritage with the dual overhead cam, in-line 8 engine design. Brochures boasted the cars were capable of top speeds of more than .