A Bridge Builder's Legacy

In the mid 1800s a gifted engineer who had emigrated from Germany made a bit of a career change that would impact the USA and even the world. John Augustus Roebling had been using his skills to design and build canals when, in 1857 he used a form of rope wire he had been making for over a decade to hold up a bridge. What followed was a series of suspension bridges culminating in the famous Brooklyn Bridge.

While many cars have traversed these suspension bridges (including me on a fairly regular basis), it was Roebling's son Ferdinand and his nephew Washington A. Roebling II who turned some of the vast family fortune into one of the classiest automobile manufacturers of the early 20th Century.

Washington Roebling was friends with a man named William Walter who had been making a very limited number of high quality automobiles in New York City. Another Roebling friend, John L. Kuser, who along with his brothers had amassed a fortune in banking and brewing among other interests, had an empty brewery across the river in New Jersey. In 1906 Walter's operation moved in, giving it space to manufacture more cars.

A scant three years later Kuser had vastly overextended himself and was deep in debt. The Roeblings and Kusers bought him out in a foreclosure sale (see, the Kuser's understood banking). Since the plant was located in Mercer County, New Jersey, the name of the car company was changed to reflect its home: Mercer.

With plenty of capital the Roeblings and Kusers brought in a number of talented designers and race car drivers to develop what they hoped would be a landmark car. In 1910 they rolled out the Type 35R. It was a very stripped down two seat speedster that Mercer claimed was "safe" to consistently drive at 70 miles per hour. It's 293 cubic inch T Head four cylinder engine powered out 55 horse power and was capable of pushing the car to over 90 MPH.

Though the car was fast and proved itself time and again on the race track, in 1914 a tragic accident convinced the Mercer company to suspend its racing program. This tragedy came on the heels of Washington Roebling's death when the Titanic went down in 1912. Suddenly the the company found itself wandering about without a true identity.

By 1919 the last of the founders was gone and the firm was purchased by a Wall Street firm that placed former Packard executive Emlem Hare in charge. His vision of re-organizing and expanding the Mercer line brought about some excellent cars, such as the 1920 Raceabout seen here. With a 298 cubic inch L Head four cylinder engine churning out 70 horse power, the car could easily top 90 miles per hour.

Hare couldn't leave well enough alone. Along with the expansion of the Mercer line, he also bought up other firms. The costs of these acquisitions coupled with the downturn in the economy caused Hare to go under. Some of his lines were bought up by Durant Motors but poor Mercer produced its last car in 1925.

Today, like so many of those early manufacturers, Mercer is little more than a footnote that succumbed to the economy and other factors. But it leaves behind some brilliant examples of early 20th Century automobile design. A fitting legacy for the man who made the Brooklyn Bridge.