The Tincher: the costliest car in the room, and the Studebaker brothers' first automobile venture

1903 — 1909 · Chicago 1903–1907, South Bend 1908–1909

The car: The Tincher was among the largest, most powerful American cars of the brass era. Its four-cylinder engine was inspired by the Mercedes designs of the day, with overhead camshaft and exposed valve gear, rated at fifty to sixty horsepower, and many cars carried double chain drive. Its air-braking system was the technical wonder of the 1903 Chicago Automobile Show, where the marque debuted. The design, the marque's historians add, was reportedly developed in conjunction with the Simplex firm. The only Tincher offered in 1906 and 1907, the Model H, was a sixty-horsepower car on a 7.7-litre inline-four, priced at 6,000 dollars. A ninety-horsepower racing version offered in 1904 cost 12,000 dollars — among the costliest cars in production anywhere at the time. The company never built more than six cars in a single year.

The making: The first Tinchers were built in Chicago by the Chicago Coach & Carriage Company, from 1903 to 1907, with components and body sections fabricated by the German steelworks of Krupp. The car's designer, Thomas Luther Tincher, incorporated the Tincher Motor Car Company in 1907 and moved the venture to South Bend, hoping — as the marque histories put it — that proximity to the Studebaker brothers would help development and sales; the brothers were the venture's majority stockholders, and the marque's auction historians describe the car plainly as backed, notably, by the Studebaker brothers, one of their first ventures into automobiles. South Bend production ran through 1908 and 1909. Doyle's register compresses the whole run into a single line — "Tincher Motor Car Co. — South Bend, Ind. 1903–1909" — and the compression is printed here as Doyle gives it; the fuller record above, Chicago first and South Bend after the 1907 move, is what the marque histories support.

The end, and the one survivor: The marque was discontinued in 1909, when Tincher and his company both declared bankruptcy. Tincher moved to Los Angeles and became the West Coast distributor of the Haynes. Exactly one Tincher is known to survive: a Model H sixty-horsepower seven-passenger touring car of about 1907, identification number B-15, long in the Don C. Boulton Collection and sold at Bonhams' Amelia Island auction on 7 March 2019 for 423,000 dollars. Bonhams catalogues the car as built in South Bend, Indiana; the chronology stated above puts the company's South Bend incorporation in the same year the car is dated, with the earlier cars Chicago-built — both statements stand as their sources give them, and the car's own build place is not resolved further in the record reached.

Sources:

1. Bonhams, Amelia Island auction catalogue, 7 March 2019 — the c.1907 Model H 60HP seven-passenger touring, identification no. B-15, ex-Don C. Boulton Collection, sold for $423,000; the only Tincher known to survive; the Mercedes-inspired four with overhead cam and exposed valve gear, the double chain drive, the six-cars-a-year ceiling, the Studebaker brothers' backing.
2. The marque histories in the Kimes-derived registers (Tincher, 1903–1909) — the Chicago Coach & Carriage construction 1903–1907 with Krupp-fabricated components, the 1903 Chicago show debut and the air-braking system, the Model H at $6,000, the 1904 ninety-horsepower car at $12,000, the 1907 incorporation and the move to South Bend, the brothers as majority stockholders, the 1909 bankruptcy, Tincher's Haynes distributorship.
3. Doyle, The World's Automobiles, full text read first-hand (Internet Archive) — the register's one-line dating of the marque to South Bend, 1903–1909, printed above as the compression it is.