The Pullman of York

York built motorcycles before motorcycles were cool, but it also built automobiles before most of America had ever seen one. The Pullman Motor Car Company operated in York from nineteen oh five through nineteen seventeen, and at its peak it made some of the most ambitious luxury vehicles on American roads. The man behind it was Albert Broomell, a York industrialist who built his first prototype in nineteen oh three.

He named the car the Pullman, borrowing the cachet of the famous railroad sleeping car, though the two companies had no connection. The branding worked. The Pullman was marketed as not only the best at the price but the best at any price, a slogan that held up well enough that in nineteen ten a Pullman won the Fairmount Park Road Race in Philadelphia, one of the era's most prestigious automotive events.

The following year, Pullmans took three gold medals at the Russian Exposition in Rostov-on-Don. Production grew from thirteen pilot cars in nineteen oh five to two hundred seventy-three in the first full year of operations. Prices ran from two thousand to twenty-five hundred dollars per vehicle at a time when that represented several years of wages for most working people.

The cars were large, powerful, and aimed squarely at buyers who wanted to be noticed. The company declared bankruptcy in December of nineteen sixteen and ceased operations in nineteen seventeen. The building that housed the original Pullman factory still stands at two thirty-eight North George Street in downtown York.