Maxwell-Briscoe Company
Maxwell automobile production began under the Maxwell-Briscoe Company of Tarrytown, New York. The company was named after founders Jonathan Dixon Maxwell, who earlier had worked for Oldsmobile, and Benjamin Briscoe, an automobile industry pioneer and part owner of the Briscoe Brothers Metalworks, who was president of Maxwell-Briscoe at its height. In 1907, following a fire that destroyed the Tarrytown, NY, factory, Maxwell-Briscoe constructed what was then the largest automobile factory in the world in New Castle, Indiana. This factory continued as a Chrysler plant following its takeover of Maxwell until its demolition in 2004.
For a time, Maxwell was considered one of the three top automobile firms in America, along with General Motors and Ford, though the phrase "the Big Three" was not used at the time. Maxwell was the only profitable company of the combine named United States Motor Company, which was formed in 1910. Due to a conflict between two of its backers, the United States Motor Company collapsed in 1913 after the failure of its last supporting car manufacturer, the Brush Motor Company. Maxwell was the only survivor.
Maxwell Motor Company, Inc.
In 1913, the Maxwell assets were overseen by Walter Flanders, who reorganized the company as the Maxwell Motor Company, Inc. The company moved to Highland Park, Michigan. Some of the Maxwells were also manufactured at two plants in Dayton, Ohio. By 1914, Maxwell had sold 60,000 cars. There were plenty of relatively low-priced cars around at the time, such as the $600 Ford Model N, the high-volume Oldsmobile Runabout at $650, the $485 Brush Runabout, the Black at $375, the $500 Western Gale Model A, and the bargain-basement Success at an amazingly low $250. To compete, Maxwell introduced the Model 25, their cheapest four yet at a low $695. The Maxwell Model 25 was a five-seat touring car featuring high-tension magneto ignition, electric horn and (optional) electric starter and headlights, and an innovative shock absorber to protect the radiator.
Takeover by Walter Chrysler
Maxwell eventually over-extended and wound up deeply in debt, with over half of its production unsold in the post-World War I recession of 1920. The following year, Walter P. Chrysler arranged to take a controlling interest in Maxwell Motors, subsequently re-incorporating it in West Virginia with himself as the Chairman. One of his first tasks was to correct the faults in the Maxwell, whose quality had faltered. This improved version was marketed as the "Good Maxwell". Around the time of Chrysler's takeover, Maxwell was also in the process of merging, awkwardly at best, with the ailing Chalmers Automobile Company. Chalmers ceased production in late 1923.
The End Of The Line
In 1925, Chrysler formed their own company, the Chrysler Corporation. That same year, the Maxwell line was phased out and the Maxwell company assets were absorbed by Chrysler. The Maxwell automobile would continue to live on in another form, however, because the new 4-cylinder Chrysler model that was introduced for the 1926 model year was created largely from the design of the previous year's Maxwell. And this former Maxwell would undergo another transformation in 1928, when a second reworking and renaming would bring about the creation of the first Plymouth.
Marketing to Women
Maxwell was one of the first car companies to specifically market to women. In 1909 it generated a great deal of publicity when it sponsored Alice Huyler Ramsey, an early advocate of women drivers, as the first woman to drive coast-to-coast across the United States. By 1914 the company had strongly aligned itself with the women's rights movement. That year it announced its plan to hire as many male sales personnel as female. At that time it offered a promotional reception at its Manhattan dealership which featured several prominent suffragettes such as Crystal Eastman, while in a showroom window a woman assembled and disassembled a Maxwell engine in front of onlookers.
In The Media
Comedian Jack Benny kept the Maxwell familiar in U.S. popular culture for half a century after the brand went out of business. In 1920 the Maxwell Company contracted with actor and producer Nell Shipman to create a short promotional film featuring the Maxwell. She was able to stretch the money budgeted for the project into a multi-reel feature entitled “Something New”. The Maxwell's abilities prominently featured in this melodramatic film, which had Nell Shipman and Bert Van Tuyle escaping a band of Mexican bandits by racing the sturdy little car across the Mexican badlands where they overcame obstacles such as boulders, rivers, gulches, and all other sorts of rough terrain.
Maxwell dealers presented this motion picture at various venues to promote the car, often with the now-battered Maxwell on display. The Maxwell Company had assisted in the film's production by supplying a car and by deploying a mechanic to the filming location. The mechanic's job included repeatedly replacing the car's transmission, which was taking a real battering in the harsh desert landscape.
A decrepit old Maxwell was famous as the car Jack Benny drove decades after Maxwell manufacturing had ceased. The running joke was that Benny was too stingy to buy himself a new car - or even a newer used car - as long as his old one still ran, however poorly. The sounds used for it were pre-recorded, but when a technical fault prevented one of the records from playing, voice actor Mel Blanc himself improvised the sounds of the sputtering car starting up. His performance was received well enough for him to continue that task permanently. |
