Why The American Sports Car?
This series intends to bring to light the interesting sports cars that American manufacturers, like the Allen-Kingston, proposed in their sales literature, in a failing attempt to interest American buyers. Nevertheless, these stillborn vehicles were of interesting design and their memory should be revived. Fortunately, our library has an extensive collection of sales literature which, besides illustrating the cars and their features, hawk a sporting motoring experience.
Allen Kingston
The Allen Kingston was a car manufactured by The New York Car and Truck Company. The company was started by Walter Allen, and initially seemed to have great promise. In 1908 cars raced successfully at the Meadowbrook Sweepstakes and the Independence Day races in Long Beach New Jersey. In addition to a regular runabout at $4250, he produced a racer, for $3090 that had 48 hp and was identical to the cars that did well on the track. It was sold as a regular passenger car as well. They advertised;
Figure 2 below shows the so-called runabout which, itself, was quite a handsome car.
However, as you can see below, the so-called racer was really a sports car with racing provisions that an ordinary citizen could buy.
Although the cars were great quality and had racing potential, Mr. Allen ran out of money and folded 1910 with less than 2 years’ experience.
