MTFCA Forum

Post to a history page I follow claims a photo lineup of some eight new Fords (no date - cars appear to be pre-1912) represents the first shipment of cars to Pocatello, Idaho and that they were sold through Sears & Roebuck. I have never read of a Ford-Sears arrangement. Thoughts, please ?

Sears Roebuck sold about every kind of manufactured product. But Ford had an authorized dealer/service/parts network, which I'd think would obviate any need for Sears while at the same time selling through Sears would put Sears in direct competition with Ford's own dealer network. Ford also had branch factories and parts depots, which would have made the Sears disribution network superflous as regarded Ford products. Ford pretty much did with automobiles what Sears did with general merchandise, with Ford keeping it all in-house, from basic raw materials production all the way to delivering the finished product to the retail customer. (And they did a great job of it, literally putting America on wheels.)

Pretty much what I figured Pat. It doesn't make sense unless anyone gas documentation of a Ford-Sears arrangement.

Rich - my neighbor has a 1909 Sears Auto Buggy - so Sears was dealing in horseless carriages. I don’t know if that extended to Ford or other makes.

Most early 20th Century manufacturers were not "vertically integrated". Ford Motor company was, from very early on.

Sears sold their own brand of autos from about 1908 to 1911. The company manufacturing these autos then renamed the cars and sold them under the name Lincoln. One of these autos has been for sale for some tim in the HCCA web site as a 1902 prototype. The seller will not admit as to what he has even presented with solid evidence.

The Sears automobiles have been fairly well researched. The Sears Autobuggy prototype (apparently two of them?) were built in 1906 and 1907.
Antique automobile hobbyists today owe a great deal to hobbyists of the 1930s through the 1950s that paved the way with preservation of both cars and history. One of those early hobbyist/historians was Floyd Clymer. However, Floyd, like many of his contemporaries depended largely on faulty memory for historic facts, and often got things wrong. A couple of Floyd C's published books got the year Sears began production of the Autobuggy wrong, stating that they were built in 1907. Hence, many of the surviving Sears Autobuggies have been identified as being 1907 automobiles since about 1950. Although this is an error that seems to never go away, I think we should forgive Floyd C.
Regardless, there are a bunch of Sears Autobuggies that have been claimed to be 1907, and since Sears did not produce cars for sale until late 1908 (almost to the day when the first model T Fords were being sold!), a bunch of those early Sears cars have been claimed as being THE Sears prototype. So maybe two were built? But about a dozen of those two survive!
There was one fellow (passed away a couple years ago) that had a pretty good claim to having one of the original prototypes. He documented it well, and offered reasonable explanations for the car's existence, and variations. He did a very good restoration of the car, and a few articles have been written about it and its claimed place in history. He researched the recorded history of the Sears prototypes probably as well as can be done a hundred years after.
There are people that do not believe his version of the car's history, but that will likely never be known for sure. I met the man (liked him!), saw the car up close, and even got a ride in it! He was quite proud of the car, and I think rightfully so. Regardless of the unknowns, he did a fine job of putting the car back together.

Darel L, I just looked on the HCCA site, and couldn't find the " 1902 Sears Prototype". I do recall seeing a picture and caption for that a couple months ago, but do not recall where I saw it.

A while ago Donnie Brown posted this Sears mail order catalogue for car parts:

https://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/5 ... 1480030176

https://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motav ... -sold-cars If a company is selling it's own brand of automobile, why would it sell a competitors brand?

Most likely, the Sears Roebuck store agent in Podunk was willing to be an agent for what ever the public wanted to buy. Including be an Agent for Henry Ford.

John M. Daly has at good amount of info on them if you are interested.
http://searsmotorbuggy.com/Sears_history.php