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"Dort car in San Francisco." An automotive brand that was not long for this world in 1923. 5x7 inch glass negative by Christopher Helin. View full size.
Those eyes are mesmerizing. Time is of little consequence. After almost a century those eyes reach into your soul. Immediately, they were the first thing I noticed about the photograph.
Lamps seem to have Ford script. Didn't know Ford supplied other makes.
[They didn't. - Dave]
Dort autos were built by Josiah Dallas Dort who had been a partner with William Crapo Durant, the founder of General Motors. Their partnership in Durant Dort Carriage Works was disolved after Durant formed GM. Dort then went on to create Dort Motor Company. He supplied mechanical parts to the Gray Carriage Company of Chatham Ontario from 1915-25 for their Gray- Dort autos. Dort abruptly left the automobile business in 1925 stranding the Gray family without a source of parts and their firm subsequently went out of the auto business also.
The Background...The Car...The People!
This 1923 Dort Six sold for $15,400.00 in 2011.
Great car but I'm so entranced by the beautiful passenger that I can hardly focus on anything else.
Looks like it will take more than that to get a smile from that girl.
Considering how quickly some early automobile companies disappeared the Dort did ok. Started by a carriage manufacturer that dated to 1884, started autos in 1915, lasted until 1924. But the Dort name lives on today. There is a Dort Highway in Flint, MI. When I was young I lived not too far from there.
Dorts, Stars, Durants, and, of course, Flints.
On the perhaps biased basis of these photos, there certainly seems to have been an awful lot of products of the "Vehicle City", Flint Michigan, rolling around on the streets of San Francisco in those long-ago days.
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