The Economy Motor Buggy Company: Fort Wayne's motor-buggy factory

1908 – 1909 in Fort Wayne; the marque to 1911–12

The company: The Economy Motor Buggy Company was founded in Fort Wayne in 1908 to build highwheelers — motor buggies on tall, carriage-style wheels, chain-driven, sold to a countryside still suspicious of pneumatic tires on mud roads. Hemmings, in its history of the marque, names William R. Everett as the company's president. Local historian Bob DeVinney, working from the city directories, names the owners as J. Ferd and Kenneth H. Beuret. The two accounts are printed as they stand: Everett as president in the trade record, the Beuret brothers as owners in the local record.

The cars: The line began with the Model B of 1908 and the Model E, rated at 22/24 horsepower; the Model G of 1909 sat on an 86-inch wheelbase with a 24-horsepower two-cylinder engine. These were production cars, catalogued and priced, not prototypes — the class distinction that separates Economy from the homebuilt machines in the entry above. A 1908 Economy survives in the AACA Museum's collection, and a 1909 Model G is documented still running.

The factory and the short Fort Wayne life: DeVinney found the company in the city directories of 1908 and part of 1909, its factory in the Commercial Addition off Taylor Street, though no exact address survives in his account. The Fort Wayne life ended in litigation and a move: the Success Auto-Buggy Company of St. Louis sued over its patents, and the Fort Wayne firm, renamed the Economy Motor Car Company, left the city for Joliet, Illinois, by 1909 — one account of the move passes it through Kankakee on the way. The marque's later history is therefore Illinois history: production at Joliet ran on, with commercial vehicles emphasised from 1910, and passenger-car production ended in 1911. The end itself is dated two ways — Hemmings gives bankruptcy by 1911, the German marque register gives 1912 — and in 1912 the assets were bought by William Pratt of Pratt Manufacturing in Joliet, which produced no vehicle.

The size, honestly: How many Economys were built, in Fort Wayne or anywhere, is not recorded. Hemmings states the point outright: the production total is unknown. Fort Wayne's one organised automobile manufacturer thus stands in the record as a real factory with named models across two cities' directories and a surviving car — and no number.

Sources:

1. Hemmings, history of the Economy Motor Buggy Company — the 1908 Fort Wayne founding, President William R. Everett, the models, the bankruptcy by 1911, and the statement that total production is unknown.
2. Connie Haas Zuber, "Horseless carriages paved way into century," News-Sentinel (2000), reporting Bob DeVinney's directory research — the company in the 1908 and part-1909 directories, the Commercial Addition factory off Taylor Street, and owners J. Ferd and Kenneth H. Beuret.
3. Classic Cars Journal, Economy marque history — the Success Auto-Buggy patent suit, the renaming to Economy Motor Car Company, and the move by way of Kankakee to Joliet.
4. German Wikipedia's Economy marque register — passenger production ended 1911, commercial emphasis from 1910, bankruptcy 1912, the 1912 Pratt purchase; carried here as the conflicting date against Hemmings.
5. AACA Museum collection record — a surviving 1908 Economy; the running 1909 Model G as documented in the marque literature.