About Eisenhuth Horseless Vehicle Company (Compound automobile)
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The Eisenhuth Horseless Vehicle Company was a New York City concern associated with promoter and inventor John W. Eisenhuth. Incorporated in Maine in 1899, it maintained offices in Manhattan’s Broad Exchange Building while chasing the still-new business of engines, motorcycles, and horseless transportation. Naturally, it aimed for more than a sensible little commuter.
In 1902, Eisenhuth acquired the plant and business of the bankrupt Keating Wheel and Automobile Company in Middletown, Connecticut. The company then gained the Graham-Fox Motor Car Company in 1903, bringing its compound-engine automobile program into the Middletown operation. The resulting car was sold as the Compound: a brass-era contraption with a three-cylinder engine built around an unusually ambitious exhaust-expansion idea.
The 1904 Compound touring car seated seven and carried a formidable luxury-car price, reportedly from $6,000 to $8,000. Eisenhuth expanded the Middletown plant in 1904 and 1905, but expensive machinery, legal friction, and rivals selling cheaper cars made for a brutal road test. About 384 Eisenhuth vehicles were produced through 1907.
Bankruptcy arrived in February 1907. The factory later passed to the Noiseless Typewriter Company in 1909—because when one bold machine-age dream stalls, another moves into the building.
Our Eisenhuth Horseless Vehicle Company (Compound automobile) collection celebrates the grandly overengineered optimism of early motoring: big ideas, odd cylinders, and a car that refused to be boring.