Alexander Winton

WE'VE WRITTEN ANY NUMBER OF times in these pages about one Scotsman who came to America, got involved in the world of automobiles, and eventually faded into obscurity. We're talking specifically about David Dunbar Buick, a man who died leaving little more than his name to the car he founded. A happier tale exists with the biography of Alexander Winton, born in 1860 on the banks of the Strathclyde, who came to America at the age of 19 to seek his fortune. As leading lights of the car industry go, he's not well known. Too bad, because for all his faded memory, the guy lived a productive, fascinating life.

Winton arrived in New York City in 1879, where he shortly found employment as an ironworker before signing on with a steamship line as an assistant engineer. Five years on the bounding main brought him back to dry land, and Winton moved to Cleveland, where his sister lived. There, he and his brother-in-law did what so many other early car guys did, which was to open a bicycle shop. It was a success, but being the 1890s, it was natural for Winton to explore the possibilities of vehicles propelled by something other than muscle power.

His first experimental powered car, with a single-cylinder engine and seats for four, rolled out in 1896. The next prototype, which appeared the following year, could seat six. Winton bought an excessed Cleveland factory to manufacture his cars, while staying in the cycle business until at least 1899. During that period, Winton built what are believed to have been the first gasoline-powered trucks produced in the United States. Also, a Winton became the first car of any sort to cross the country, coast to coast.

By 1900, the Winton Motor Carriage Company was also the largest purveyor of gasoline-engine automobiles in this country, with more than 100 units produced, including one sold to James Ward Packard, who was so annoyed with its performance that he went into building cars himself. Winton decided that the way to get still bigger was to go racing, which is arguably his most enduring claim to automotive fame. In 1901, Winton took his stripped-down beast, the Winton Bullet, to Detroit for a match race against the 999, piloted by an unknown named Henry Ford, and fell out while leading. That was in 1901, and it allowed Ford to lure investors who financed his new Ford Motor Company. Winton lost another round to the 999 shortly thereafter, this time with the immortal Barney Oldfield in the saddle. One year, in an early Gordon Bennett race, Winton entered a single-cylinder race car whose engine displaced 3.8 liters. It broke.

Things went better on the road-car side, with Winton introducing its first straight-six engine in 1908, boasting a price that pushed $6,000. Still, more than 1,200 found buyers. Winton next moved to downsize his cars and engines while expanding their range of body styles. The outlook was initially positive, but sales dropped to only a few more than 100 units in 1924, when auto sales ceased. By then, Winton was well involved in the production and design of large marine and stationary diesel engines, which burned "distillate," as the heavy fuel oil was then called. General Motors bought the operation in 1930, two years before Winton died, and installed a distillate Winton V-12 in the M-10000, the first lightweight, streamlined passenger train ever built. Winton was absorbed into GM's Electro-Motive Corporation, later Electro-Motive Division, which produced heavy rail locomotives until GM sold it to Caterpillar in 2005.