Albert C. Champion was born in Paris in 1878, he would not only establish the company that still bears his surname today, but form part of the newborn General Motors' earliest foundation, a product line that's virtually a household name today.
As an adolescent, he found work as an errand boy at a Paris bicycle factory. It was at the very apogee of the 1890s global bicycling craze, and the factory encouraged Champion to take up racing. He was a prodigy and won championships in both France and the United States. Like many other competitive cyclists, he was immediately smitten with powered vehicles, and while in the United States, raced both cars and motorcycles. His most notable ride was the Packard "Gray Wolf," but Champion crashed it at the Brighton Beach course in Brooklyn and was seriously hurt.
While convalescing in France, he intently studied automotive mechanics, focusing particularly on magnetos and other electrical components. With financial backing, he returned to the United States in 1905 and opened a small factory in Boston, where he began manufacturing spark plugs and selling imported magnetos.
Thanks Marc B!
Great story of C.Champion,with pristine corporate planes.B-17!Stop The Presses!What a job!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome.
ReplyDeleteThere is some debate about the roots of Champion Spark Plugs and AC Spark Plugs. The story from the Champion side is that Frank and R.A. Stranahan started the Champion Spark Plug company in Boston and hired Albert Champion to be a salesman for them. The company moved to Toledo to supply plugs to Willys Overland and then Ford. I think the story goes that the Stranahans and Albert Champion had a falling out and Albert started his own company, using his initials AC.
I think the AC Spark Plug history is more like the story in the Hemmings article you linked, where Albert Champion started the Champion Spark Plug company and went on from there.
This article talks about the uncertainty of the start of these companies, as well as talking about the home of R.A. Stranahan, which is now a park in Toledo.
http://historymysteryman.com/the-story-of-the-stranahans-champion-spark-plug-and-the-preservation-of-wildwood/
The author has some other interesting stories in his blog, including some about the Crosley brothers, and one I read about Tony Stewart buying a restored AJ Foyt USAC Silver Crown car from a man in the Toledo area.
wow, that's a lot more than I want to dive into tonight, I just was a little curious about the airplanes, but that wasn't what google returned on my search, so I went and looked at the Hemmings article, and only had a moment - because I was at work, and lost interest after learning that Champion was a race car driver of the legendary Packard Gray Wolf, a car that I had spent a long time hearing of but not getting photos of.
DeleteSo, due to the more I know the more I can draw connections to, I now can place the inventor of the spark plug with one of the earliest successful race cars, which motivated Dick Teague to make a copy of the Gray Wolf from original drawings.
https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/08/1903-packard-gray-wolf-because.html
https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-recreation-of-1903-packard-gray.html