Are there any cars that have gone extinct?

There was a company here in Arkansas that built a car called the Climber. There's an example of it at the Museum of Autos on Petit Jean Mountain among some other marques I've never heard of.
Check out museumofautos dot com Neat stuff.

 

Kid working at burger king in omaha back in 1988 had a white one, wouldn't sell it as it was a gift from a departed family mamber and didn't give a rats ass what it was. drove it all year

 

I think the Climber was in a story in Old Cars Weekly about 30 years ago. An older restorer found what was believed to be the only one left and he restored it. I think he sold it to Bill Harrah for his collection. Anyways the guy was all depressed about it and spent lots of effort and actually found another and restored it....so there were 2 know to exist.

 

I have a rough pair - must be the only ones left!!

Steve

 

At some point in my long-haul truck driving career (let's don't go any further on that subject!) I came upon an old dude trailering a Yugo all decked out in fat tires, competition numbers, lettering, headlight covers and the whole schmear.

No idea what sort of competition it was set up for .... probably rallying or some such.
Also not sure exactly when this was, but it was well after the "popularity" of Yugos. (What'd it last .... like 6 weeks or somethin' ?)

Anyway, I had to give the ol' guy a horn toot and a thumbs up .... for sheer cussedness and perversity if nothing else!

 

not a car but interesting, in the early seventies Aurathetic made a small steel motorcycle that ran on two 12 volt deep cycles, they are supposed to hit 30 and are completly street legal classed as a moped,no pedals though. I have one in my Garage that belonged to BD Maule the creator of Maule aircraft. I saved it from a dumpster while one of the hangers was being cleaned out, few more seconds a lathe would have been thrown on it. There are a few around, but very few. they were made out in Cali. mine is a 72

 

FiddyFour! I did NOT know that you are one of the faithful who really believs (like me) that Preston Tucker dead serious about builidng a VERY progressive car! Man, glad to see your face/name here!!!

 

Maytag made a few cars, I think there is only 1 left

 

The closest I can come, just off the top of my head, to NO EXTANT SPECIMENS of a particular make would be the WASP.

Now, I don't mean the MARMON Wasp that won the first Indy, either.

The Wasp was the ONLY car ever commmercially made in the state of Vermont. I had a time finding any evidence it existed at ALL, but FINALLY found there's one in a Vermont museum and one in a Tupelo, Mississippi, museum.

They were high-quality and NOT mass-produced. Only six, I think, were made, so they are about as scarce as hen's teeth. One very interesting touch on these VERY attractive cars was some had a tiny airplane propeller replica on the radiator cap that spun when the car was in motion!

 

The YUGO? OH! Those were the cars PROGRAMMED in Yugoslavia to self-destruct in two years, right? So, none of those would still exist, naturally. Jeez, probably the most advertised failure since the Edsel (which wasn't a bad car at all, if you liked the body design).

 

The Star & Oakland were both GM or Durant cars. Made in pretty fair numbers. I saw a late-'20s Oakland. These are NOT extinct.

 

Lewis' Airomobile of 1937 was one WEIRD looking car. It went though ome changes, but Lewis couldn't find financial backing to bring it to market. I do NOT know if the protype survived.

 

The guy that lives behind me has 3 Powells and I know where there are two others in Kernville, CA

 

Jrdan was actually a pretty famous car made by ned Jordan in Cleveland. They ran Continental engines. Out of bus. after '31, but certainly NOT extinct (extinct for cars would mean NONE exist, and there are Jordans well-restored & in museums & private hands).

 

The Graham brothers started working for Dodge, I think, in the early '20s. They went on thier own to build cars & bought up ailing Paige (which had a sister car, the Jewett). Graham ceased making cars when WWII started, though they had run out of steam, saleswise, anyway. AFTER the war, the Graham came bakc out as half of Kaiser-Frazer. And -- you got it -- it was called FRAZER to that it didn't sound like the poor-selling pre-war models of Graham. I wouldn't call Graham, Paige or Frazer "extinct." They just went out of business, not out of existence.

 

Packard

 

I know a guy with enough Packards if he lined them up it would look like a dealer's lot.

If by extinct you mean, none exist, there are probably particular years or models or even makes of early cars - pre-1930 and probably primarily pre-1920 - that there may be none left of. But odds are for every make you can come up with, there's still at least one, somewhere in a barn or garage or collection. Unless they made like less than a dozen in the first place, and they were nothing anyone ever cared about.

 

Marathons were thought to be extinct....then one was found over seas and a few pieces were found under the old factory 45 miles from me. Or at least that's what I was told....I'm sure there may be more to it.

Wiki says there may be 8 survivors.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_automobile_manufacturers

 

i have a magazine from 1918 and it lists all several hundred or thousand car brands of that time and most are extinct

 

I am looking for a 1933-34 Continental Roadster. They were made in a 6-cylinder and 4 cylinder version. I can not even find a photograph of one, let alone find one in the flesh.

All I've ever seen is this drawing. I believe that there are no examples left.

 

Two left. One is in the petit Musiem of Automobiles on Petit Jean Mt. Used to work for a man that owned both. He had 10 shares of Climer motor stock hanging on his office wall that was dated 1919. Both were big turing cars.

 

Thats funny, There is a old guy at my church that has a mint one, and I mean mint, that bought it new and drives it every now and then for a back up car. What about chandler? I am asking because I just cut up the rear of a 1919 touring model for the rear half of my T roadster.

 

It's funny to read back wondering how this ancient thread got ressurected and see one guy say AMC died in the '60s and another guy correct him that "AMC made cars through at least 1979" - and still get it wrong. So let's set the record straight -

AMC ceased to be as an independent company in August 1987, but continued through 1998 as a division of Chrysler, called Eagle. Chrysler probably only really wanted Jeep in the first place, most Eagles were just badge-clones of various other Chrysler products that you have to actually look close to tell any difference.

I guess it didn't help that from 1970-1987 they made two cars using virtually the same tooling the entire run, that started out as the Hornet and Gremlin, and even came in four-wheel-drive versions (Eagle model name used on all body styles by this point) before they were done. Chrysler even built 2300 or so carry-over 1988s before they finally dropped them for good (the Eagle Eagle, by that point, the brand and model being the same name). After that, the only thing around from an AMC design was the inline six used in some Jeep products.

And they killed Plymouth in 2001, fwiw.

 

Incidentally, The Yugo was not really that bad a car for the price - originally $4000. The emissions equipment became a problem but the US led embargo on Yugoslavia helped kill it's production. Essentially, Pres. Clinton killed the Yugo.

 

According to my 1961 AACA list, Francis Starves owned a 1921 Moore with A10 motor, in poor condition.
It's a lead, anyway...
Also lists two Marathons, 1912, and a 1934 Continental

 

The guy who owns Coker Tire in Chattanooga has one of the very few if not the only remaining Nyborg, a car that was built in Chattanooga. I think it's 'teens vintage. Up into the '20s, there were hundreds of makes that were more assemblers than manufacturers. They would build a body and frame and outsource nearly everything else. The same Continental or Lycoming engines, Eaton axles, Gemmer steering boxes, etc. were used on many different makes. Thus, on some nearly-extinct makes, the mechanical parts may not be that hard to find. Then when you get back of about 1910 or so, you had an infinite number of buggy makers who decided to rig up one of their buggies with one of those new-fangled gasoline engines. Take your basic buggy, remove the stuff the horse attaches to, improvise some sort of tiller to steer the thing, and mount a one or two cylinder gasoline engine and a belt-drive transmission, and we're ready to cruise! Some of the extinct stuff deserved its fate, some things are not as rare as they should be.

 

I was glad to run onto this old thread, because it's a very interesting issue. RustyNY, you really are RIGHT: POSTERS NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE "EXTINCT" (AT LEAST FOR PURPOSES OF OLD CAR MAKES) MEANS NONE EXISTING.

Hence, Packard certainly would not qualify, though some years of Peerless, Locomobile or Marmon (also luxury cars) probably would. Near-extinct would be the one-off 1930 Peerless V-16 that never got to the market. It was walled up in Cleveland, I've heard, for literally decades.

AMC: Thanks RustyNY for a more thorough run-down on the wind-down of AMC. If I chipped an over-generalization there, I sure apologize, 'cause I would want errors or hearsay on any network. I THINK I did say that the RAMBLER name carried AMC up to '69 or '70; then AMC marketing phased the Rambler name out as being old-hat (Rambler had been almost a SYNONYM for AMC since the late-'50s).

 

From what I understand, Continental discontinued the Roadster for 1934.

 

how about anything made by the dodge brothers before it became chrysler in 28? I know my dad has a 28 chrysler made into a rod, parked right now because the body needs extensive woodwork. but before chrysler they did make cars , I don't even know what models they would have been