Here’s a remarkable car from a remarkable man: the Rickenbacker, produced from 1922 to 1927.
In Captain Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973) and the Rickenbacker Motor Company, here we have a case where the man was far more remarkable than the car that bore his name.
A mechanic and racing driver while still in his teens, Rickenbacker drove for the Duesenberg and Maxwell factory teams and competed in the Indianapolis 500 four times. He was the leading U.S. flying ace of World War I, leading the 94th Air Squadron with its famous insignia, the hat in the ring, becoming an American hero and a household name. He owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from 1927 to 1945, built Eastern Airlines, and he was left for dead in two separate air crashes, one where he was lost on a raft in the Pacific for 24 days. And all that is barely a snapshot of a incredible life in which the Rickenbacker car is one small chapter. Still, the car is an interesting story.
1924 Rickenbacker Coupe with Eddie Rickenbacker in straw hat
After a brief stint with William C. and Cliff Durant launching the Sheridan automobile, in 1921 Rickenbacker partnered with Byron P. Everitt and Walter Flanders, two leading lights of the Detroit auto industry, to launch a car under his own celebrity name. Everitt was named president, Flanders vice president of production, and Rickenbacker vice president of sales.
First shown at the New York Auto Show in January of 1922, the Rickenbacker Six featured European styling, advanced engineering, and prices in the $1500-$2000 range. The slogan: “The car worthy of its name.” Many of the technical details were Rickenbacker’s own ideas, including a double-drop frame, steel disc wheels, and twin flywheels, one at each end of the crankshaft. From a big factory on Cabot Street in Southwest Detroit, production began in March of 1922.
1925 Rickenbacker Eight Coach Brougham
In July of 1923, Rickenbacker became one of the few cars in the world to offer four-wheel brakes, which, believe it or not, were a controversial feature at the time. Some automakers loudly claimed they were unsafe. Rickenbacker was not deterred, though he was convinced throughout his life that the company’s reputation and sales were crippled by the smear campaign. Still, Rickenbacker produced nearly 6,000 cars in 1923, and in 1924 a straight-eight model, the Superfine, was introduced alongside the six.
While production peaked at 8,000 vehicles in 1925, the company was struggling internally. Flanders, a production wizard who had organized the Piquette Avenue plant’s manufacturing operations for Henry Ford, was killed in an auto accident in June of 1923. Frustrated with the four-wheel brake controversy and management’s lack of direction, Rickenbacker resigned in 1926, and the company went banktupt a year later. Rickenbacker took his $250,000 loss and got on with his amazing life.
1924 Rickenbacker Six Coupe 
Top notch synopsis of Captain Eddie and his cars.
He quit school in the seventh grade, survived over a dozen major aviation “crack ups” and is one of the greatest problem solvers in American History. His autobiography should be on everyone’s must read bucket list. The lengths that Studebaker, GM and others to destroy the reputation of Captain Rickenbacker and his car so soon after WWI is mind boggling…
I’m a big fan of his wife, Adelaide Frost Durant Rickenbacker. Quite a woman.
It was a struggle fitting his life into one paragraph. As you can see, a lot was left out.
I had heard of Rickenbackers long ago, but only recently dove into them a little deeper, learning an interesting post-mortem from Wikipedia on the tooling at the time the factory was liquidated.
I just found this, that gives more details on why the motors found their way to Germany:
The tooling for both the six-cylinder and eight-cylinder 1927 Rickenbackers was sold to a Danish businessman in Germany named Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen who had planned to produce the engines for sale to European automakers. When no orders were forthcoming, Rasmussen instead shopped his designs to Audi, in which he was the majority shareholder. This resulted in the Rickenbacker 6-70 becoming the Audi Type-T “Dresden” and the eight-cylinder Rickenbackers becoming the Audi Type-SS “Zwickau.” Both were produced until 1932.
Great angle. We mean to do a story on that sometime, but we needed to tell the Rickenbacker story first. Often we do it backward.
Thx, that seems reasonable. You need to get the basic story done first. Look fwd to one on those Audis, tho.