Monday 15th December 1919

The Locomobile Company was organised by E. S. Hare to acquire the assets of the Locomobile Company of America. Locomobile, an automobile that became known as the “Best Built Car in America”, was also one of the most expensive and elegant automobiles manufactured in the United States. By 1911, the six-cylinder Model 48 weighed 3 tons and was built of magnesium bronze, aluminium and steel, cost $7,900 and was owned by the who’s who of upper East Coast aristocracy – Melon, Gould, Vanderbilt, Wanamaker, Governor Cox of Massachusetts, Wm. Wrigley to name a few. In the West, Locomobile 48’s were owned by names such as Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix and Cecil B. DeMille. Two people would bring the company to its fruition as the successful builder of the best built car in America: Andrew Riker, a talented and brilliant engineer, and Samuel Davis as financial manager and treasurer. Locomobile had it’s beginnings in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1898, when a man named John Brisben Walker, an entrepreneur and owner of Cosmopolitan Magazine became fascinated with the automobile. Hare had taken control of Locomobile as well as Mercer and Simplex, in a plan to make a larger corporation under his control. Unfortunately Hare’s company did not have the sound base and financial assets to sustain its goals. Locomobile finally was able to separate itself from Hare in 1921 after a new board of directors took control.