"Ruxton"

The Ruxton is an automobile.

Its color-effects are by Joseph Urban.

It has no running board.

It is ten inches closer to the ground than the average car.

Its gear shift is a handgrip extending from the cowl instead of a lever from the floor.

It will be powered with a Continental 8-cylinder motor.

It will be priced at about $4,200.

It is the first U. S. passenger car with a front-wheel drive.

Such, last week, appeared the salient facts concerning the new "mystery" automobile, now definitely in production and soon to be offered to the motoring public. From an engineering standpoint, the distinctive feature of the Ruxton (named for W. V. C. Ruxton, partner of Spencer Trask Co., bankers, and a director in New Era Motor Car Co., Ruxton builders) is the front-wheel drive, previously used in only a few trucks and racing cars.* Sponsors of the Ruxton maintain that the pull of the front-wheel drive is a more efficient application of power than the push of the conventional rear-wheel drive. More apparent to the layman is the ground-hugging streamline effect of the low structure made possible by the absence of the long drive shaft and rear-end differential. It is this low body which has made possible the elimination of the running-board--the passenger steps from the car directly to the ground. The Ruxton also claims greater "readability" and driving ease.

New Era Motors, Inc. (a Delaware corporation, capitalized at $5,000,000, all privately subscribed) expects to build 500 Ruxtons by July 1 and 12,000 during 1929. Its president, A. M. Andrews, is a director in Hupmobile Motor Car Corp., its vice president and designer, W. J. Muller, is an engineer with the Edward G. Budd Manfacturing Co. (auto bodies), and one of the directors is Vice President Frederick W. Gardner of Gardner Motor Co., Inc. This personnel, coupled with the announcement that the car will be built in Cleveland and in St. Louis plants, resulted in the surmise that the "plants" are the old Cleveland-Chandler plant (recently bought by Hupp) in Cleveland and the Gardner plant in St. Louis, and that experimental Ruxtons are being built at the Budd Philadelphia works. The Budd company has been announced as official body builders for the (all metal) Ruxton.

New Era President Andrews is also a Budd, as well as a Hupp director. At the age of 19 he was a dealer on the curb market, retired from the brokerage business (1919) at 40, bought, and later sold, a chain of California hotels. His Connecticut estate, Freestone Castle, is patterned upon English models; he has also a Colonial home in Altadena, Cal. He is the owner of the Sialia, a yacht formerly in the possession of Henry Ford. The Sialia is the fourth largest privately owned yacht in the world.

William J. Muller, designer of the Ruxton, has been mechanic, driver and designer of racing cars, drove a 130-h.p. French Hotchkiss over dirt tracks in Brooklyn as long ago as 1907. He helped organize the R. K. Mulford Co., which manufactured racing cars under the direction of famed Racer Ralph Mulford, was later associated with Ralph De Palma. He has been Experimental Engineer with Budd Manufacturing Co. since 1921. During the period in which Mr. Muller was perfecting his front-drive mechanism (one difficulty lay in the application of power to the front wheels without interference with their mobility as steering agents) he consulted with C. Harold Wills, designer of the Wills-St. Claire. Designer Wills's contribution to the Ruxton has not been definitely stated; he is, however, a Ruxton director.

*French Delage and Peugeot passenger cars, however, include stock models with front-wheel drives.