The American Simplex and the Amplex: Mishawaka's brass-era car

1906 — 1915 in the registers · marketed from 1904 on two accounts · Mishawaka

The company and its founders: The Simplex Motor Car Company of Mishawaka built the car the registers list first as the American Simplex and, from 1910, as the Amplex. The marque's modern historian, Ronald Sieber, names the organizers: E. J. Gulick and H. L. Bell. The company put its works on the ground this city's industry knows well — the History Museum's account of the site records that the American Simplex Motor Car Company erected the earliest buildings there from 1907 to 1910 to manufacture its high-powered two-cycle automobiles; it is the ground the American Foundry Equipment Company bought in 1926, whose course stands whole in the Businesses section. The company's slogan billed the car, in the marque histories' phrase, as "a motor-car symphony."

The dating, printed whole: The sources give the car's beginning three ways, and all three stand. Sieber states that the Mishawaka firm "had decided to market its product, the American Simplex, beginning in 1904," and the ConceptCarz marque record likewise dates the start of production to 1904. The register tradition carried in the encyclopedia record dates the manufacture 1906 to 1915. The History Museum dates the plant itself 1907 to 1910. The three are not reconciled here: a company marketing a car from 1904, in register production from 1906, and building its own works across 1907–1910 is a coherent sequence, but the record reached does not document the 1904–1906 cars' place of assembly, and none is invented for them.

The car: The American Simplex was a large, costly machine built around an engine nobody else in the industry would touch. Its motor was a four-cylinder two-stroke — a valveless design, in Doyle's one-word summary — of 6,435 cubic centimetres (127 by 127 millimetres), rated at fifty horsepower at 900 revolutions, later enlarged to 6.8 litres and still rated at fifty horsepower; top speed is given at sixty miles an hour. The company held to the two-stroke long after the industry had standardized on the four-stroke, and when it finally offered a four-stroke in 1913 the offer failed. The chassis carried its own ideas: Sieber records an innovative three-point suspension and a running-gear subframe affixed to the rear axle. The wheelbase stood at 117 inches, stretched to 124 inches for 1911. The Model D-50, in production from 1908, paired the two-cycle engine — by then of some seven litres — with a three-speed transaxle. The 1910 line comprised three open and two enclosed models, priced up to 5,400 dollars, with the new 30/50-horsepower Toy Tonneau at 4,300 dollars and a limousine offered at 5,600 dollars; the 1910 models also offered self-starting, a feature the marque record notes the major makers, Cadillac among them, would not match for another year or two.

The renaming: In 1910 the car became the Amplex. The encyclopedia record gives the reason as avoidance of confusion with the better-known New York Simplex, and notes the change coincided with a reorganization of the company; Sieber gives the sharper version, that the name was changed "to avoid a lawsuit," the Simplex name being registered with the A.L.A.M. under the Selden patent, and that the Amplex was registered with the association in its turn. Both tellings are printed; the fact beneath them — a 1910 renaming forced by the collision of two companies' names — is the same.

The end, as the sources give it: The History Museum's account of the company is the fullest local one, and it is a story of contraction, not a single closing date. When the attempt at quadrupling the company's quota failed in 1912, M. W. Mix — Melvin Mix, the Dodge Manufacturing president whose Mishawaka portfolio stands in the Businesses section — bought the car company. Mix sold it to Adolph Kamm, who produced hand-built cars of the Amplex's design. The encyclopedia record nonetheless carries the manufacture to 1915, and the Gillette succession that follows is dated 1916 in both Doyle and the encyclopedia record. The course is printed as the sources give it: series manufacture under the Simplex Motor Car Company into the middle of the decade, a sale in 1912 inside that span, hand-built continuation under Kamm, and the works passing out of the company's hands in 1916. No production total for the marque is stated in any source reached for this entry — not in the registers, not in the marque histories, not in the local record. The gap is named rather than filled; the settling sources would be the company's own records or the A.L.A.M. and chamber-of-commerce production returns, neither of which the record reached contains.

Sources:

1. Doyle, The World's Automobiles, full text read first-hand — "American Simplex. — Simplex Motor Car Co. — Mishawaka, Ind."; "Amplex. (11) — Simplex Motor Car Co.; Gillette Motors Co. — Mishawaka, Ind."; note 11, "Valveless."
2. Ronald L. Sieber, the Simplex marque history (ronaldsieber.com), read first-hand — the organizers E. J. Gulick and H. L. Bell; marketing from 1904; the three-point suspension and the rear-axle running-gear subframe; the 117-inch runabout of 1908; the 1910 renaming to avoid a lawsuit and the A.L.A.M. registration; the 124-inch frame for 1911.
3. The American Simplex marque record as carried in the encyclopedia tradition (Wikipedia, "American Simplex," and its mirrors), read first-hand — manufacture at Mishawaka 1906–1915 by the Simplex Motor Car Company; the two-stroke four of 6,435 cc at 50 hp, later 6.8 litres; the 1910 line and prices, the Toy Tonneau at $4,300, the limousine at $5,600; self-starting in 1910; the unsuccessful four-stroke of 1913; the Gillette takeover of the facilities in 1916; the company's own 1910 catalogue and Floyd Clymer, Historical Motor Scrapbook No. 4 (1952), among its references.
4. The History Museum (South Bend), "American Simplex Company-Mishawaka," read first-hand — the plant buildings erected 1907–1910 for the manufacture of high-powered two-cycle automobiles; the 1910 renaming; the failed 1912 quota, M. W. Mix's purchase, the sale to Adolph Kamm and his hand-built cars of Amplex design; the plant's passage to munitions in the First World War and to the American Foundry Equipment Company in 1926.
5. ConceptCarz, the 1908 American Simplex Model D-50 Roadster record, read first-hand — production of the marque from 1904, the D-50 from 1908, the seven-litre two-cycle four at 50 hp with three-speed transaxle.