The company we knew as Pontiac had its roots with the Oakland Motor Car Company of Pontiac, Michigan. Edward Murphy, owner of the Pontiac Buggy Company, and Alanson Brush, a former consultant at Cadillac Motor Company in Detroit, collaborated to create the company. In 1893 Murphy established the Pontiac Buggy Company in Pontiac, Michigan producing horse-drawn carriages. The founders of Oakland Motor Company named it after Oakland County, Michigan, the location where they established their company.
In 1907 it becomes clear that motor car sales are surpassing carriages, and Edward Murphy incorporated the Oakland Motor Car Company, an offshoot of his Pontiac Buggy Company. The initial Oakland vehicles featured two-cylinder engines and did not sell well. In January of 1909 Murphy sold half the Oakland Motor Car Company to William Durant. In Durant’s newly formed General Motors empire, the Oakland was the charter member. Moreover, the two-cylinder engine was not accepted by Cadillac for use earlier.
The designer of this engine was Alanson P. Brush, the inventor of the Cadillac one-cylinder engine. This engine featured an unmistakable copper water jacket. The engine didn’t have a carburetor or a throttle! It had a ‘mixing valve’, in which the incoming air struck a plate that raised a needle from its seat. There was no fuel bowl or float.
Here’s an image from the patent for Brush’s mixing valve. I counted 129 patents for Brush!
Additionally, here are a few more images from another Brush patent that was well ahead of its time. This is a variable valve timing mechanism! The driver altered the intake valve timing with a lever, that essentially served as an accelerator.
If you are a BMW aficionado, this might sound somewhat familiar. BMW’s valvetronic and VANOS systems control engine speed by altering intake valve duration and lift. They introduced this in the 1990’s, or some eight decades after Brush patented his mechanism. What goes around . . .
Back to the Young Oakland . . .
After one year of production, Oakland’s principal founder, Edward Murphy, sold half of the company to William C. Durant’s General Motors Corporation in early 1909. GM acquired the remaining rights to Oakland after Murphy died in the summer of 1909. Oakland was the entry GM make, with Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac above them. In 1910 the engine offerings changed to four-cylinders, with a 334cid, 60hp six-cylinder arriving in 1913.
In 1913, Northway Motor and Manufacturing Company sourced a 365 cubic inch V8 flathead engine. William Durant had purchased this company in 1909. Oakland remained reasonably profitable, if not wildly successful. They decided that Oakland needed a cheaper companion make, just like how Cadillac had LaSalle, Buick had Marquette, and Oldsmobile had Viking. (Obviously, these three examples would come later than Oakland – Pontiac, though). The new Pontiac proved to be a highly successful vehicle, some might even say too successful.
Pontiac Success
The introduction of Pontiac in 1926 was accompanied with much fanfare. The initial products included a coupe, landau coupe, and landau sedan. The sole engine was a six-cylinder of 186.5 cubic inches displacement, making 49hp at 2400rpm, with a 4.8:1 compression ratio. Pontiac vastly outsold its Oakland parent. In 1926, you could get a 1926 Pontiac coupe for about 20% less than a similar 1926 Oakland.
This unexpected success, along with the economic pressures of the Great Depression, resulted in the demise of the Oakland make. Pontiac suffered as well, but they weathered the storm far better than Oakland. In 1932, they changed the name of Oakland Motor Car Company to Pontiac Motor Company.
