Fageol didn't stop with tractors
December 2002
Farm Collector Staff
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The Fageol factory about 1920.
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The purpose of the Fageol Motors Co. factory, built in 1917, was to build tractors, cars, buses and trucks, and the stories behind the Fageol cars, buses and trucks are as interesting as those of the tractors.
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Fageol cars, called the 'Fageol Automobile Deluxe,' were one of the most expensive cars ever built, with a 1920 price tag of $12,000.
The Fageol brothers, Frank and William, wanted their cars to be the finest and most exclusive passenger cars ever made. The first one was exhibited in January 1917 at the Foreign Car Salon in Chicago, eliciting phenomenal interest and international publicity. Subsequent introductions in New York and San Francisco met with similar success.
In its June 1917 edition, Pacific Service Magazine reported: 'The company builds the Fageol Car equipped with the famous Hall-Scott 125-horsepower military hydro aeroplane engines. This car can be started from dead stop, reach a speed of 25 miles and stopped all within 40 feet. It is elegantly equipped and sells for $12,000. The Chevrolet factory, nearby, sent a floral tribute with the words, 'From the lowest to the highest price car.''
The Fageois used a 135- to 145-inch wheelbase, and the engine had six cylinders. Fageol patented a hood design of rear-facing fin louvers positioned atop the hood to help with cooling, although the louvers turned out to be mostly for looks. (Some of the tractors even had 'blind' louvers, which didn't help with cooling at all.)
Unfortunately, the United States' entry into World War I stopped the production of Fageol automobiles after only three cars were built. A car of such luxury would have been a wartime folly, and additionally, the two men most instrumental in the car's design were conscripted by the U.S. government to design military vehicles. They were E.J. Hall, a noted engine designer who had made a car called the Comet 10 years earlier, and Col. J.C. Wallace, formerly Packard's chief mechanical engineer. Together in the service, the two men designed the Liberty airplane engine.