Sandeep Verma 
There are a lot of emotions that one can attach to cars. While brands get a feeling of pride, individual car owners – well, you can’t even count the number of emotions that run through their veins when it comes to their cars.
A sense of achievement, change in lifestyle, the opportunity to impress a girl/guy, and above all; freedom!
Freedom, now that word has a huge importance in our story here since I suppose it is that one singular ‘privilege’, yes I called it a privilege, that everyone should be ‘entitled to’ without any discrimination.
I hope you would understand my sarcasm here when I use verbiage like privilege and entitlement – since that is how freedom was treated, not so long ago.
The Brand Story
Starting a company is very different than sustaining the brand. Even though some of the best bespoke cars came out of the factory of C.R. Patterson & Sons, it proved to be a difficult journey marred with consistent struggle and inability to cope with what some of the other automotive giants were offering – that too at a very competitive price.
C.R. Patterson & Sons for various reasons, finance being the biggest of them, had a limited production run of its meticulously crafted cars, and only a few dozen were manufactured between 1915 and 1918.
I must also tell you, that just two years prior, in 1913, Henry Ford, an automotive magnate, had introduced the revolutionary moving assembly line at his Ford Motor Company.
And in just two years Ford was churning out hundreds of thousands of Model T cars annually. If that wasn’t the only challenge, these cars were priced significantly lower than the bespoke Patterson-Greenfield roadster.
From A Slave To A Businessman
As to how C.R. Patterson got his freedom, remains uncertain, it is a known fact via historical archives that he managed to reach Greenfield, Ohio, prior to the Civil War, and secured employment within the city’s carriage-building industry. He was a hard-working man, who, thanks to his commitment, skills, and dedication ascended to the position of foreman and when his workplace was acquired by another company, he found an opportunity to become a partner, which he gladly capitalized on.
And in no time, soon enough, he assumed full ownership, which resulted in reorganizing the business as C.R. Patterson & Sons.
During its prime in the 1890s, C.R. Patterson & Sons boasted a racially diverse workforce of 10 to 15 individuals, who together, crafted an impressive array of 28 distinct carriage styles.
What style of cars did they make? Simple open buggies to more intricate closed designs tailored for doctors and other professionals.
Shift In The Business Module
Cars were proving to be the new rage across the globe. Therefore, after the death of Patterson in 1910, his son Frederick recognized an opportunity and decided to work towards it.
There was a report in a local newspaper that Frederick’s wanted to create a vehicle capable of traveling greater distances on a gallon of gasoline. The other vision being, leave every other brand behind in the process.
He shared his vision with the company’s board, citing compelling statistics that were too tempting to ignore.
“In 1902, there was one car for every 65,000 people, but by 1909, that ratio had improved to one vehicle for every 800 people. Given these figures, I believe it’s time for us to embark on the creation of a Patterson motorcar.”
What also helped this vision was the decline, of over 95%, in the traditional carriage-building industry and the market was ripe for trying something new.
C.R. Patterson & Company, therefore, endeavored to transition into auto manufacturing and started to offer services such as repairing novel automobiles, encompassing tasks like repainting and addressing engine and mechanical issues.
Fredrick had a manager named C.W. Napper, who he used to travel with a lot. During one of these travel tours, they came up with this idea of gasoline-fueled carriages, that were not run by the horses. Fredrick wanted to create a product that would cover a great length, on a gallon of gas, and while doing that, leave the other similar brands behind.
History Of The Brand
The inaugural Patterson-Greenfield emerged from the production line on September 23, 1915, bearing numerous attributes akin to those of a high-end automobile. Roadster and Touring Car were the two models that were made available.
30-horsepower, four-cylinder engines, a full floating rear axle, demountable rims, and an innovative electric starting and lighting system – these were just some of the features that came with these cars.
An advertisement proclaimed, and we quote “The Patterson-Greenfield possesses every modern motoring feature and convenience. It is a remarkable car, celebrated for its striking aesthetics and enduring performance.”
Everything needs money, and a business that wants to be big surely needs a lot if. And that was a problem. Due to the substantial capital investment required for the production of the Patterson-Greenfield car, which never materialized, the company never achieved full-scale manufacturing.
Over a span of three years, it managed to produce an estimated 30 vehicles. In contrast, in Detroit, Henry Ford’s revolutionary moving assembly line dramatically reduced car production time from over 12 hours to a mere 1 hour and 33 minutes, churning out thousands of cars daily.
By 1919, the time to close the shop on manufacturing arrived and the Patterson family, who held controlling interests in the company decided to transform the company.
What did they get into?
Fabricating bodies for buses, hearses, moving vans, delivery trucks, and more!
Rebranded in 1921 as the Greenfield Bus Body Company, the Pattersons initially supplied their buses to local school districts. Throughout the 1920s, the family successfully sustained their business, primarily specializing in bus body construction, utilizing Chevrolet, Ford, and General Motors chassis.
Fredrick’s time at the leadership was cut short in 1932, when he passed away at the age of 61, thus, leaving a vacuum within the company.
Unable to scale and find funding for expansion, the family business came to a permanent closure in 1939.
“Detroit became too formidable for us, and we simply couldn’t compete – Postell Patterson, grandson of Charles Patterson.”
Even more than 150 years after its inception as a carriage manufacturer, C.R. Patterson & Sons endures as the sole Black-founded and Black-owned automaker in American history.
Now that – is freedom – wouldn’t you agree?
