Spaudling Manufacturing Company Grinnell Iowa

 

(Des Moines Tribune. March 6, 1914)

“You’ve seen the kind of corn and pigs I raise. Well, the auto I make is just as good.”

 

It’s not the pitch you’d expect from an auto manufacturer, but Henry Spaulding wasn’t your typical businessman. He came to Iowa in 1876 with his own ideas about business.

 

His ads didn’t contain any fancy talk about engineering. Just a fat Iowa farmer smoking a cigar, holding a Spaulding automobile like he’d grown the thing behind the barn.

 

The ad had some nerve to it.

 

The Spaulding was built in Grinnell, Iowa, and the company wasn’t shy about saying so. It was an Iowa car, made for Iowa people and Iowa roads.

 

Those roads weren’t much to brag about. They turned to mud in the spring and dust in the summer. Ruts grabbed the wheels. Bridges looked temporary because most of them were. Sometimes the road just wandered off and left you sitting in a field.

 

Spaulding built a car for that.

It was big and heavy, with a four-cylinder engine, wooden-spoke wheels, and plenty of iron underneath. Early models had about 30 horsepower and sold for around $1,500. Later came the Spaulding 40, with a bigger Buda engine and a three-speed transmission.

 

You started it with a crank. If it kicked back and hurt your arm, the car didn’t apologize.

 

Spaulding wanted people to know that it was tough. One ad called its chassis the “World’s Champion.” Another bragged that it was the only sleeping-car automobile made. The seats folded down into a bed. 

 

You could drive until dark. Pull off the road. Climb inside and go to sleep. You saved the price of a hotel and probably woke up with a stiff neck.

 

Still, it was clever.

 

The company got its start making wagons and carriages. Henry W. Spaulding opened a blacksmith shop in Grinnell in 1876, did well, and built a large factory. His sons, Frederick and Ernest, joined him.

Spauding Manufacturing Co., Grinnell, Iowa (vintage postcard, circa 1910)

By 1909, the family could see which way the road was going.

 

Horses still filled the streets, but automobiles were coming fast. They rattled, smoked, scared livestock, and broke down regularly. People loved them anyway.

 

So the Spauldings built their own.

 

The first cars went on sale around 1910. They weren’t cheap little machines for putting around town. They were large touring cars for people with money and who were okay with getting dirty when something broke.

 

And something always broke.

 

A driver carried tools and spare parts so that he could fix whatever went wrong. If he couldn’t, he found a blacksmith.

 

That part worked out nicely for Spaulding.

 

The company also knew how to stir up attention. One Spaulding reportedly carried six men up the steps of the Iowa State Capitol. Another tore across Iowa, outran a fast-mail train, and set what the company called a world dirt-road speed record.

 

That was the Spaulding way.

 

Build a big car. Make a bigger claim. Then go out and see if the machine could live up to it. 

 

For a while they did, but they couldn’t build them fast enough or cheap enough to keep up with Ford. The company quit making passenger cars in 1916, but kept cranking out truck bodies, farm equipment, and road machinery until 1929.