America's Car Museum: John D. Rockefeller's 1917 Crane Simplex automobile (photo diary)

by Ojibwa for Museums

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Sunday, Sep. 15, 2024 Sunday, Sep. 15, 2024 at 11:15:10am PDT

Harold LeMay, a Tacoma businessman, loved cars and managed to collect more than 3,000 automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles over forty years of collecting. A number of the vehicles from his collection form the nucleus of the LeMay—America’s Car Museum. This collection of more than 300 cars, motorcycles, and trucks is displayed in a four-level building in Tacoma, Washington. One of the Museum’s cars is a 1917 Crane Simplex Model 5 with a coach-built body by Brewster & Co. which had been ordered by John D. Rockefeller Jr. as gift for his father’s 78^th birthday.

The Simplex Automobile Company manufactured cars from 1907 to 1918. The Smith & Mabley Manufacturing Company had been established in 1904 to manufacture automobiles, but with impending bankruptcy in 1907 it was sold to the Simplex Automobile Company.

The Crane Motor Company in New Jersey built cars from 1912 to 1915. The Crane Model 3 was a six-cylinder car which was produced only as a chassis. The coachbuilder Brewster &Co. built most of the bodies. In 1914, the Crane Model 4 was produced which featured a six-cylinder engine cast in two blocks of three rather than three pairs. In 1915, the Simplex Automobile Company purchased the Crane Motor Company and the Crane Model 4 became the Crane Simplex Model 5.