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Danville's
Tincher Automobile
by
John L. Tincher III Reprinted
from Winter 1981-82, page 10
Thomas Luther Tincher, youngest of the eight children of
Danville’s pioneering banker and merchant John L. Tincher I, (Spring
1976), formed a company to manufacture automobiles.
The
Tincher Motor Car Company was located in
Chicago
before moving to
South Bend
,
Indiana
in 1908. The Tincher, a
quality car, never competed in price with low price models manufactured by
Henry Ford. While Mr. Ford’s
cars were selling for $300 to $500 to fit most budgets, the Tincher was
priced at $6500 for a select few. The
Chicago
plant produced six cars a year, and after moving to
South Bend
, production was increased to
eighteen autos per season.
The
Tincher was manufactured in several different body styles.
The Krupp Company in
Germany
, (a world leader in new processes and quality production of steel),
supplied much of the material for this auto and gave class to the Tincher
with its parts of chrome nickel steel.
Many servicemen will recall Krupp’s contribution to German
armament with the Krupp guns armor planting.
The Tincher was powered with a 50-60 horsepower engine, had a wheel
base of 127 inches, and weighed three thousand pounds.
It came in seven passenger models and carried a three year
guarantee on all materials and workmanship.
A silver cup owned by John L. Tincher III bears the following
inscription:
Wheaton
County Fair
Sept. 13, 1907
First Prize
Three Mile Automobile Race
Won By
Allan Pirie
Driving Tincher Racer, Time 3 min. 20 sec.
This was a
speed of nearly sixty miles per hour, quite an accomplishment seventy
years ago. There is
speculation that Allan Pirie was of the Pirie family of Pirie,
Scott & Co.
The
Tincher was not to have a future however as it was to join the long list
of auto manufacturers that went out of business in the twentieth century.
When the company failed Thomas Luther’s mother, Caroline, paid
off his debts and the Tincher Motor Car Company was no more.
Following
the failure of the company, Thomas Tincher moved to
Los Angeles
where he became West Coast Distributor of the Haynes automobile.
And the Tincher car? The
Antique Auto Society in
Hershey
,
Pennsylvania
reported that it was thought that Mary Pickford owned a Tincher, maybe
it is still preserved somewhere. If
it is, it would be worth far more than the $6500 which seemed so
exorbitant at the beginning of the century.
The
June 6, 1907 issue of the “The Motor Age” magazine shows a detailed
catalogue and article regarding the Tincher automobile.
It seems like history often repeats itself. When Tincher was
building his auto, much of the body work was completed by a company in
Germany, The Krupp Company. Today, this same company has factories in
Danville. ThyssenKrupp began its Danville existence with the purchase of
the Wyman Gordon plant on Lynch Road in 1991. Though the Tincher
auto no longer exists today, ThyssenKrupp is alive and running.
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