Davis

The postwar era was not kind to automotive entrepreneurs. Preston Tucker’s reputation lay in tatters after his dream turned nightmarish. Hubert Mitchel was left with a mountain of legal bills after Keller Motors went bust, while Playboy’s Lou Horwitz was left in bankruptcy. S.A Williams was chased out of the car business after his Town Shopper adventure to begin a new career in counterfeiting, and Del Mar’s Arthur Cooksey was never heard from again. But Gary Davis, the man behind the 3-wheeled Davis Divan, was the only of the era’s entrepreneurs whose car making activities landed him in jail. Perhaps having affair with the wife of the Los Angeles County DA who was investigating his activities had something to do with it. But it seems like in all things, he just couldn’t help himself.

It is easy to cast Gary Davis in the role of the charming rouge who smooth-talked investors into handing over their money. But did he set out from the start to perpetrate a scam? Or did he truly believe in his 3-wheeled car, and saw himself as the man to bring it to the world. Was he too blinded by his own vision of “The car America asked for” to realize he didn’t have anything close to the money nor the expertize to deliver it - or that the future wasn’t going to run on 3 wheels? Is it a con when the conman cons himself?

California Dreaming

Our story begins in the summer of 1938. Glen Gordon “Gary” Davis was a used car salesman in Evansville, Indiana. Though he was 34 years old and had never finish high school, Gary Davis was handsome, charismatic and full of confidence. He had also just completed a correspondence course in automobile engineering. Now he was packing up his old Buick with his new bride and heading off for California. The brochures called it the land of opportunity. It was also the land of make believe. And a good place, Gary thought, to reinvent himself as an automobile designer…and maybe to put some distance between him and his 3 previous wives.

Not long after arriving in the Los Angeles basin, Davis signed on at a well-known used car dealership in Beverley Hills, where he did his part to fuel the Hollywood dream machine with shinny used Cadillacs, Pontiacs and Studebakers. By the time war was declared, and all new car production was halted, Davis was running his own used car yard in West Hollywood. While business was good, Gary didn’t come to California just to keep on peddling other people’s cast offs. He had bigger plans.  

As the war dragged on, it was taking more and more elbow grease to get the by now well-used chariots on his lot to look spiffy enough to unload. He could see firsthand that demand was ready to explode. And new cars, not used, was going to be where the action was. He soon began promoting himself as a builder of custom cars for an elite clientele. And while it is not clear if Gary ever had a hand in making any actual cars during this time, his natural charm and chiseled good looks helped him meet a lot of people. From these new associates and acquaintances - movie people for whom self-promotion was a way of life - he learned the ways of selling dreams Hollywood style. Gary Davis’s dream was to see his name up in chrome.

The Davis Before Davis

That correspondence course Gary took back in Indiana, while no doubt vigorous, wasn’t quite up to the task of designing and building his own new car from scratch. So the question was, where do you get a hold of a car to put your name on.  That is where the millionaire playboy enters our story. Joel Thorne Jr., an heir to the Chase Manhattan Bank fortune, was barely thirty years old and already one of the leading patrons of the SoCal racing scene. Young and rich with a reckless nature and an addiction to speed, naturally Thorne was drawn to auto racing. And though he may have been a fast living adrenaline junkie, he was no dilatant. He founded Thorne Engineering with the sole purpose of winning the Indianapolis 500. Indeed, he competed as a rookie in 1938, finishing 9th, and sponsored cars in 1939 and 1940. A Thorne car driven by George Robson would eventually take Indy’s first post-war checkered flag.

But back in 1941, it was looking pretty clear that auto racing of any kind would soon be put on ice.  So Thorne turned his attention to acquiring a new street car to feed his need for speed. He wanted something that would be not only fast and fun but also look like nothing else on the road. To build such a machine he approached a talented young racecar builder named Frank Kurtis, who worked part time in Thorne’s Burbank garage. After the war, Kurtis would go on to build his own racing cars under the Kurtis-Kraft banner - cars that won at Indy six times during the 1950s. He would also offer his own production sports cars beginning in 1949. But when Mr. Thorne approached him in mid-1941, Kurtis was still raising money for his budding racing endeavors by building hot rods and custom sports cars for well-heeled clients. Thus, he was happy to take up Thorne’s challenge.

Some months later Kurtis presented his patron with a wild creation called the Tiger. It was a bullet shaped 3-wheeled roadster powered by a souped-up Ford flat-head V8. What the Tiger gave up in cornering stability – which was a lot – it made up for in aerodynamics, maneuverability and lightness. Thorne loved it. He drove this crazy machine throughout much of the war, crashing it a few times along the way.

His final mashup with the Tiger would lead to scandal and tragedy. One morning in the wee hours, Thorne showed up at the door of his shop manager, Art Sparks. This wasn’t unusual. Often Sparks had been called on to bail his boss out of some jam - one that usually involved a booze-induced wreck. But this time when Thorne came to Sparks’ door, there was blood all over his white suit. He said there had been an accident… the girl he was with had been hurt… and would Art cover for him while he put some distance between himself and the incident. In fact, later that night the girl died of her injuries. But by the time a proper investigation could get under way, Joel Thorne had fled to Cuba to ride out the storm. It took several months for the scandal to die down, the appropriate people appeased, and he could come home. By then the Tiger had been repaired, but Thorne had understandably lost interest in it.

Becoming a Carmaker

The exact circumstances under which Gary Davis - whose business card now read Industrial Designer - met Mr. Thorne and acquired the Tiger are unclear. Davis later claimed to have paid $10,000 for it. This seems unlikely, as at the time Gary had no bank account and was living in a garage apartment with his now 5th wife. No matter. Possession is nine tenths of the law. The important thing was that Gary now had a car he could put his name on.

While Gary Davis’ credentials as an industrial designer might not have survived a thorough vetting, his sales skills were on full display. He renamed the car the Californian - because that’s where the future was headed. Then he took his show on the road. Promoting himself as the car’s designer, Gary touted the futuristic Californian’s 3-wheeled stance that allowed for rocket-age aerodynamics and cat-like maneuverability. Not to mention, he pointed, you only have to pay for 3 tires! He also claimed the Californian could safely pull a U-turn at 50mph - though the source could well have been Joel Thorne, and therefore approached with extreme caution.

Stories on the Californian and the new Davis Motor Company appeared in Life magazine and Newsweek and in several newsreels. Davis even secured the car’s appearance in a TV detective series called The Cases of Eddy Drake. The show wasn’t picked up for syndication until several years later, and it didn’t last long - but at least there were a line or two about the car in Varity. His publicity tours tapped into the ferocious appetite of all manner of entrepreneurs wanting to get in on the ground floor of this exciting new carmaker’s vision of the future. Distributor and franchise fees came rolling in.

At the same time, Davis was able to recruit a former Ford engineer named Joseph Charipar to spearhead the design of a production car. Charipar in turn was able to assemble a talented group of engineers and craftsmen from the local aerospace industry. The men, 154 in total, agreed to work at no pay in their spare time. In return they accepted Gary Davis’ promise that they would receive all accumulated wages at double the going rate - once production began. Through similar persuasiveness, he was able to acquire for a song an abandoned aircraft factory in Van Nuys. There he marked out an imaginary production line on the floor to show to perspective investors. Charipar got the design team set up in a corner working on a second prototype.

The Davis Divan

 That first true Davis was completed in August 1947. Based off the Californian’s template, using Charipar’s knowhow and Davis’ own sketches – he actually did have some design talent - they created perhaps the most futuristic car the world had ever seen.

The new car still had 3-wheels and 2 doors. But it was wider, able to accommodate 4 passengers in the front bench seat, and now sported a fixed hardtop. The Ford V8 was gone, replaced by a more economical Hercules 4-cyl engine. Gary and his team affectionately called it “Baby.” It was sleeker than the Californian, with an aluminum body, complete with retractable hidden headlights and slim wrap-around bumpers. A Davis brochure would poetically describe the shape as, “blends with the flow of motion…achieving true beauty of contour.” Yes, this Baby was a real looker.

Once chassis and suspension testing was complete, Baby was ready for its big reveal. It was first displayed in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After Thanksgiving, it was shipped off to Philadelphia to participate in a Christmas pageant, after which it was put back on a fast train west in order to take part in the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, CA on New Year’s Day. Between each appearance Baby got a fresh new paint job, giving the illusion of multiple cars. The publicity blitz included Gary Davis’ assurance that the car would sell for just $995. He claimed that it would be in production in early 1948.

People everywhere wanted to buy the car, to invest in the company, get a dealer franchise. Money poured in - $1.2 million in franchise and distributor fees alone. Two more prototypes were built. Body dies were purchased, and a makeshift production line was set up where the tape used to be. The publicity tours grew more lavish, with catered parties, first class train cabins and luxury hotels. There was also a generous salary for Gary, along with an exclusive rented home near Beverley Hills. Dreams do come true!

Much attention had been paid to the Baby’s jet-age aluminum sheet metal and tubular space frame. But when the second prototype called the Delta was built, cost concerns dictated that its body now be made of steel. And the Baby’s advanced aircraft-style disc brakes – the first of their kind on an American automobile – were also ditched in favor of ordinary Bendix drums. The Davis Divan model name did not appear until the third prototype, known internally as the Model 482.  The final features and dimensions of the production cars were locked in. It would now use a 57hp Continental 4-cyl engine and have a removable hardtop.

Ah yes, production cars. When Gary Davis was promising investors that his assembly line would be up and running in the first half of 1948, he forecasted 50 cars per day initially. Production would quickly ramp up to 200 cars a day, and topping 40,000 total by year’s end. But this was Hollywood. Everything here was bigger and brighter than real life. In reality, the Davis Divan would have a production run even more fleeting than The Cases of Eddy Drake TV show it once appeared in.

While Davises were appearing at the head of parades, in newsreels, and on the covers of magazines, it seemed the only place they weren’t showing up were on its 300+ dealer lots. So it should come as no surprise that with the start of 1949, there came an investigation by Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office into complaints of franchise fees paid with no deliveries of actual cars. Charges were also lodged by 17 Davis Motors employees who had not been paid in two years.

Even with his dream sinking beneath the waves, Gary Davis was still able to convince a hand full of employees who had not yet jumped ship to cobble together a Jeep-like vehicle out of leftover model 482 parts. His plan was to present it to the U.S. military as a cheaper-than-a-Jeep light reconnaissance vehicle, thus rescuing the company with a fat government contract. Called model 494, three of them were completed in April 1949, and then sent off to the government’s ordinance proving grounds in Aberdeen, Maryland for evaluation. But the Army quickly rejected the 3-wheeled truck for its inability to navigate even 2-track dirt roads, let alone sand and mud. The Air Force, however, thought the 494 might make a good “low-cost administrative vehicle,” and in November 1949 they requested additional technical information. The inquiry went unanswered. Earlier in that month, the Davis Motor Car Company had been seized by authorities.

Epilogue

The Davis story shares elements with that of the Tucker. Both involved charismatic men promoting futuristic cars…and promising more than they could deliver. Both were pursued by zealous investigators. But while Preston Tucker was exonerated of all wrong doing - even though by then it was too late - Gary Davis was arrested, prosecuted and convicted on 28 counts of fraud. Once his appeals were exhausted in 1953, he was sent to a minimum-security prison for 2 years. It is not clear his pursuers would have displayed such tenacity and aggression had Gary not bedded the prosecutor’s wife. By now we have lost track of which of his own wives he was two-timing.

Upon his release from prison in 1955, Davis returned to the car business…sort of. He went on to develop the Dodge-em bumper car and the Start-O-Car amusement park rides. We are not sure of the final tally of ex-wives Gary had accumulated over the years, but we do know that he was looking for investors to fund a 3-wheeled safety car with 360-degree rubber bumpers when he died of emphysema in 1973.

Whether Gary Davis was an entrepreneur or a conman, it’s hard to say. But we do get the sense he was a man who lived for the moment, not one to dwell on the negatives of a plan. Like whether he could really get a car into mass production for under $2 million, was the future of the automobile really going ride on 3 wheels, or should he really sleep with the wife of the man who held his life in his hands? But for those many months during the late 1940s, Gary Davis was living the dream.

Amazingly, of the 16 vehicles produced by the Davis Motor Company – 2 prototypes, 11 production cars and 3 military vehicles - only one did not survive. After the company had been liquidated by the bankruptcy court in 1950, a group of 15 former franchisees purchased the rights to the Davis design, along with the remaining parts and tooling, and one completed car. They hoped to revive the 3-wheeler under the banner of the Delta Motor Company. When no U.S. investors would touch the project with a 10-foot pole, they shipped their car to Europe in the hopes that infamous British maker of 3-wheelers, Reliant, might be interested. They were not. By then the investors had run out of money and could not pay British import duties. Thus the car was destroyed by customs authorities per British law.

We know all this thanks the Davis Registry, created by Tom Wilson of Ypsilanti, Michigan (hometown of Preston Tucker) and is now maintained by the Lane Motor Museum. The registry is a clearinghouse for information and the whereabouts of every Davis ever built. The Baby can be seen at the Lane, along with one car out of the brief production run. Another is part of the Peterson Museum’s Cars of Los Angeles collection. A military 494 prototype resides at the National Auto and Truck Museum in Auburn, Indiana. The rest have found their ways into various private collections.

Copyright@2022  by Mal Pearson