Displacement About Hupmobile
The Hupmobile was an automobile built from 1909 through 1940 by the Hupp Motor Company of Detroit, Michigan, which was located at 345 Belleview Avenue. Their first car, the Model 20, was introduced to the public at the Detroit Auto Show in February 1909. The company initially produced 500 vehicles.
Robert Craig Hupp, a former employee of Oldsmobile and Ford founded the company with his brother Louis in 1908. Production began in 1909. In 1910, production increased by more than 5000. Following disagreements with his financial backers Hupp sold his stock in the Hupp Motor Car Company and established the short-lived RCH Automobile Company, later the Hupp-Yates Electric Car Company.
Hupp Motor Company, however, continued to grow after its founder had left. A new plant was purchased in 1924 as Hupp competed strongly against Ford and Chevrolet and by 1928 sales had reached over 65,000 units. To increase production and handle the growth in sales, Hupp purchased the Chandler-Cleveland Motors Corporation (Chandler Motor Car) for its manufacturing facilities.
Sales and production began to fall even before the onset of the depression in 1930. A strategy to make the Hupmobile a larger, more expensive car began with the 1925 introduction of an 8-cylinder model, followed by the discontinuance of the traditional 4-cylinder Hupmobile. While aiming for a seemingly more lucrative market segment, Hupp essentially turned its back on its established clinetele. Nevertheless, in a constant effort to remain competitive, Hupp introduced a number of new features. They were one of the very first automakers to equip their cars with "free wheeling", a device that enjoyed immense, but brief, popularity in the early 1930s. Unfortunately, the company made the same mistake that many other medium-priced carmakers were making at the same time. Namely, in an attempt to capture every possible sale, they offered many different models. With Hupmobile's relatively low production volume, the result was that no model could be produced in sufficient quantity to keep manufacturing costs low enough to provide an operating profit. Hupp abandoned its more conservatively styled product line and turned to industrial designer Raymond Loewy to design its 1932 Hupp cyclefender, a flashy roadster which did well at the track, but sales continued to decline. 1934 saw the introduction of a striking restyle called the "Aerodynamic" by Loewy, as well as the lower-priced series 417-W using Murray-built slightly-modified Ford bodies.
