An Early Dodge Bros Survivor
Horace and John Dodge were rarities among the flgures in the early automotive industry — unlike the vast majority of their colleagues and competitors, they were successful.
Their operation began with bicycles before transitioning to a machine shop in 1901. It was an example of perfect timing, as automobiles were starting to be seen as having potential, and anybody hoping to capitalize on that possible future needed machine work. Although he wasn’t their flrst customer, Henry Ford brought in the Dodges as suppliers and, just as importantly, as investors. There was money to be made on their contract to supply Ford with drivetrain components, and there was more money to be made on the dividends Ford would pay them.
The catch was that Ford demanded exclusivity, meaning the Dodges could supply no one else. It all worked to everyone’s satisfaction — or, at least the brothers were making enough money that they went along with it — until Ford cut its dividend. The Dodges had turned their initial $10,000 investment in Ford into $50,000,000, even without considering the dividends, so they could afford to take risks. Standing up to Henry Ford, the Dodges sued, but long before Ford eventually bought them out, the Dodge brothers had begun building their own cars, which they named Dodge Brothers.
The Dodge brothers’ Dodge Brothers
The Dodge Brothers car that appeared in November 1914 was a fourcylinder touring priced at $785, the equivalent of about $21,000 today, and 371 examples were built by the end of the year. Dodge Brothers would go on through a long and interesting life, and the name continues in business today as just “Dodge,” with one of the most signiflcant points on its timeline being its early military vehicles. More precisely,
it was the use of its vehicles by the military, since the U.S. Army’s flrst Dodge Brothers vehicles were everyday civilian models.
They proved themselves in 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson’s patience ran out. He ordered General John J. Pershing to take troops into Mexico in search of Pancho Villa, a revolutionary who seemed to think it was a smart tactic to attack and kill Americans north of the border. Pershing had used a 1915 Dodge and that, no doubt, infiuenced his decision to take Dodges south. He also took Lieutenant George S. Patton, who put several of those Dodges to the test by making the flrst motorized attack in American military history.
Patton’s attack is covered in numerous accounts, one of which caught the attention of Mark Ounan, of Fairfleld, Pa.
A militar y connection
“I was in the Army, career, 30some years,” Ounan explained, “and a student of history. I love to read about history, and I read about George Patton and studied him. I read everything about him that I could flnd, and one of the things I stumbled upon was that he drove a Dodge in Mexico.”
Ounan had long been interested in antique cars and planned to own one when circumstances allowed. Reading about Patton’s experience convinced him to buy a Dodge Brothers, but it had to be a model old enough that it could have been in Mexico with the future general. With that, he bought a Dodge Brothers built in the flrst week of 1916.
“That was the flrst one,” Ounan said. “Once I had that, I kept reading and thinking for a few years that, ‘Now I need one that was in World War I.’”
The result was his 1918 Dodge Brothers U.S. Army staff car, but why stop at two? Six years ago, he bought the 1914 model featured here
“This is car no. 213,” he said, “and it was made probably in the last week or the third week of December of 1914. It’s the 213th car they made ... It’s a 35hp touring car, and you can tell that, as they’re making these cars, they’re still kind of feeling their way about how to do all these things.”
Another car built just a few months later might show numerous differences, and while that likely would be the source of nightmares for a restorer, it was something Ounan didn’t face.
“This car was restored in the ’60s,” he said. “In fact, it has a tag on it from the restoration shop from ’68 when it was done.”
The Dodge Brothers had sat unused for several years, and so restorer Dan Kerr went through it, straightened out some problems with the magneto and the fuel system and buffed the 1968 paint.
“But basically,” Kerr said, “it was just like this.”
Ounan’s dealt with carburetor problems since, but based on the flrst tour he completed with it, he knows that the Dodge is capable of running very well.
“This thing was faster than all the other cars,” he recalled. “I was passing Dan on the hills.”
The car he was passing was Kerr ’s 1915 Dodge Brothers.
Since then, Ounan’s replaced the clutch, and although it still needs some adjustment, he said it’s not a difflcult car to drive. Part of the reason is that its pedal layout is the conventional clutchbrake-throttle, and the three-speed selective transmission operates with an everyday fioor-shifter at the driver ’s right.
“This is laid out like a modern car,” Ounan said, “so I always tell people, ‘Do you know how to drive a clutch?’ ‘Yeah, I can drive a clutch.’ ‘I can teach you how to drive this car in two minutes.’”
Some might be surprised at that, just as they’re surprised that its wood wheels are really wood, but Ounan said one of the most common observations is that the car has no windows, and its occupants are effectively riding outside. The Dodge Brothers, in many ways, was a step up from the wagons that preceded it, but it wasn’t a complete break, and Ounan knows how to make that clear.
“I say, ‘You were out in a wagon right before this,’” he explained. “‘You’re going down a dirt road? This is made for dirt roads. You think of it as a really nice looking and a fancy car, but it wasn’t. This was a workaday vehicle.’”