The E-M-F Company was an early American automobile manufacturer that produced automobiles from 1909 to 1912. The name E-M-F was gleaned from the initials of the three company founders: Barney Everitt, William Metzger, and Walter Flanders.
Origins
Everitt
was born in 1872 at Ridgetown, Ontario, and learned wagon-building in Chatham, Ontario. In the early 1890s he worked for carriage-maker Hugh Johnson in Detroit. In 1899 he started his own bodybuilding company, with orders from Ransom Olds, and then Henry Ford. In about 1904 his own first assembled car was the Wayne. The car model bearing his name was the Everitt, 1909-1912.
was born March 4, 1871 in Waterbury, Vermont. He was a machinist who started with servicing sewing machines during an apprenticeship at Singer Corporation, followed by an association with Thomas S. Walburn in general machining in Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 1890s. An order came from Henry Ford in Detroit to the company for a thousand crankshafts, and Ford was impressed by the response. Then in the early 1900s Flanders again worked with Walburn, this time for Ford at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant at the corner of Piquette and Beaubien Streets in Detroit. Flanders became manager of manufacturing at the plant, where he also worked with the two future vice-presidents in charge of manufacturing, Peter E. Martin, and Charles E. Sorensen. Flanders was replaced by those two when he resigned abruptly on 21 April 1908. Flanders' skill was in setting up and effecting timesaving procedures and methods at the plant, where engineers had developed the Model T in late 1907, which then began production in 1908, and led eventually to invention of the new moving assembly line to meet skyrocketing demand for the Model T in 1910.
Overview
In 1909, E-M-F bought the Detroit plant of the De Luxe company and began production of E-M-F cars. E-M-F produced several models of its own design and contracted to sell them through Studebaker wagon dealerships. At one point, E-M-F vehicles outsold all but Ford in the American market. Late in 1909, E-M-F established a Walkerville, Ontario, branch plant to produce the E-M-F 30 and Flanders 20. E-M-F had a third plant in Port Huron, which was sold to the Havers Motor Car Company in 1912. Shortly afterward, E-M-F was bought out by Studebaker, which formed Studebaker Canada, and rebadged E-M-F's products: the E-M-F as the Studebaker 30 and the Flanders as the Studebaker 20. Sales of these rebadged models continued through the end of 1912.
Takeover
Studebaker's president Fred Fish, being unhappy with E-M-F's poor quality and lack of management, gained control of the assets and plant facilities in 1910. To remedy the damage done by E-M-F, Studebaker paid mechanics to visit each unsatisfied owner and replace the defective parts in their vehicles at a cost of US$1 million to the company. The E-M-F name continued into 1912 with the Studebaker name becoming more and more prevalent on the cars. In 1913, the E-M-F name was replaced by Studebaker. Problems aside, E-M-F vehicles had sold well in the growing marketplace. In 1909 E-M-F placed fourth in total US automobile production, behind that of Ford Motor Company, Buick, and Maxwell, with Cadillac fifth. In 1910 the firm built 15,020 vehicles and again held on to fourth place behind Ford, Buick, and Overland. In 1911, the firm placed second in overall assemblies with 26,827 automobiles produced for the year. In his history of E-M-F, Anthony Yanik stated Studebaker built its strong automotive base "on the shoulders of E-M-F", having "purchased the entire company for an outrageous price in 1910". However, the E-M-F production figures had been underpinned by Studebaker's vast resources, and sales were largely dependent on Studebaker's reputation and marketing network. Flanders also ran the short-lived Flanders Automobile Company, which produced cars wholly based on previous E-M-F designs. The Flanders company was absorbed into Maxwell Motor Company which was reorganized out of the assets of the United States Motor Company in 1913. On June 20, 2005, the E-M-F Detroit plant on Piquette Avenue and John R. Street caught fire and within a few hours it was gone. The five-alarm fire nearly spread to the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant where Henry Ford built the first Model T.
