| Articles Hood museum operator
acquires unusual Canadian car
By Greg Glassner
Managing Editor
The Madison County Eagle
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Unchallenged for the title of Madison County's most prolific car collector, John Dudley is now seeking variety rather than quantity.
To that end, the proprietor of Hood's Roaring Twenties Antique Car Museum added a 1920 Gray-Dort Touring Car to his collection.
The new addition is a snappy two-tone, oxblood red and black car with brown leather interior and folding canvas top. Dudley traded a 1925 Paige sedan to make way for the Gray-Dort, which is in full operating condition.
The Paige was a desirable car, but his museum has many sedans, Dudley explained. With only 28 Gray-Dorts remaining of the estimated 30,000 produced, the 1920 touring car is a rare bird, indeed.
The Gray-Dort Motor Car Company built cars in Canada from 1915 to 1925 and was a marriage of the Gray Carriage Co. of Chatham, Ontario and the Dort Motor Co. of Flint, Michigan.
During the ten years they were produced, Gray-Dort was highly regarded in rural areas for its tough and dependable cars, Dudley said. Its American-made Lycoming engine, which powered many of the cars built by independent manufacturers, was up to harsh Canadian winters.
The Gray-Dort lineup eventually included touring cars, sedans and roadsters. A right-hand-drive model was produced for export to England.
Joshua Dallas Dort built an estimated one million horse-drawn carriages in his Flint, Michigan factory before he finally saw the handwriting on the wall, switching to automobiles in 1915.
One of Dort's carriage-making partners, William Crapo Durant, had led the way to abandoning the carriage trade to found General Motors in 1908. The office of the old Durant-Dort Carriage Company is now on the National Register of Historic Landmarks.
The period from 1915 to 1925 was a very competitive era for automobile makers. Dort answered the competition by cutting a deal with the William Gray & Sons Carriage Company, located in Chatham, Ontario, just across Lake St. Clair from Detroit, to assemble cars badged as Gray-Dorts.
Dorts and Gray-Dorts offered many other innovations to lure buyers. A "Sedanette" with removable sides was introduced in 1918. Rolls-Royce type radiators were added in 1921, a nine-window sedan and delivery van in 1922. Although somewhat of a dubious distinction, the 1922 Gray-Dort Special claimed to have the industry's first "automatic reversing light."
A more expensive six-cylinder car featuring an overhead valve Falls motor was introduced in 1923 and the popular four-cylinder line was scrapped in favor of the six in 1924, which made the car more expensive and less competitive.
In 1924, Joshua Dallas Dort decided to go out of the car business. He died playing golf a year later. Without a source of supply for key components in a new designs, Bill Gray threw in the towel in 1925.
The Gray-Dort had a bigger impact on the Canadian market than the Dort did in the U.S. The Gray-Dort outsold the far cheaper Chevrolet in Ontario-Province.
Dudley admits his wife Clarissa and daughter Martha chided him for adding "a foreign car" to his All-American collection. In reply, Dudley points to its many American-made components and design.
The one-of-a-kind 1945 Surlesmobile also has a foreign accent. It was designed by American Don Surles, who had it built on a U.S. Army Jeep chassis in postwar Japan.
Martha Dudley's Roaring Twenties Antiques, which was on U.S. 29, is now housed with the car collection in the museum building on Route 230 at Hood.
August 9, 2001
