Car : Rambler 38 HP
Year : 1912
Engine : 4 cylinders in line
Bore and stroke :114×114 mm
Cylinder capacity : 4652 cc
Gears : 3 forward
Brake horse power : -
Maximum speed : -
Wheelbase : –
Suspension : front: semi-elliptic leaf- springs; back: ¾ elliptic leaf- springs
This firm operated from 1902 to 1912. After 1957 the name Rambler was taken up by Nash Motor Car Company.
The company started under Thomas B. Jeffery in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1901. It began with small-cylinder capacity engines and progressed to both higher cylinder capacities and greater numbers of cylinders. The 38 HP belongs to the period when the company was still called Rambler: a solid car, but essentially conventional. In 1904 the firm went from twin-cylinder engines to 4 cylinders; the engine in the car illustrated here had the distinctive feature of having equal bore and stroke. It was thus known as a ‘square’ engine, a type adopted by many makers after the Second World War. Rambler’s early cars were all built along certain lines (lightness, cheapness, twin-cylinder front-mounted engine), which earned it a good reputation.
In 1914 the name Rambler was changed to Jeffery (after the Firm’s founder), but in 1917 the whole concern was taken over by Nash, which fifty years later revived the name Rambler. At first it was to be the name of a single model, but later it was used for many others, including Hudsons (Hudson had also become part of Nash in 1954).