Tim Gosling looks at the Jeffery Quad, a truck designed for the US Army using a different approach to four-wheel drive
With a fortune established by constructing bicycles under the name Rambler, Thomas Jeffery turned his attention to the construction of automobiles. His first, a very rudimentary machine powered by a single-cylinder petrol engine, was constructed in 1897. Jeffery, seeing its potential, sold his bicycle business and set up an automobile factory in the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin. He displayed a prototype at the 1902 Chicago Automobile show to great interest, and within 12 months, 1,500 examples would be sold. The company went from strength to strength and by 1905 they were building more than 3,000 vehicles a year. Thomas Jeffery died in 1910 and the business was taken over by his son Charles, but quite soon the direction of the company would suddenly change.
Humble beginnings
