If asked to compose a list of the ten men most responsible for the development of the American automobile industry, who would you include? Would Henry Ford, David Buick, Walter Chrysler, Ransom Olds, Benjamin Briscoe, and Charles Nash make that list? Would it include A.W. Tobin and Ross Judson, two men who laid many of the industries foundational stones?

Tobin and Judson, in the first decades of the 21st century, may be less than an obscure footnote to automotive history but the business they created provided a staggering number of famous and forgotten manufacturers with a rock solid foundation upon which to build. In addition, it also served as an integral component in the development of the fledgling American aeronautical industry.

Assembling jeep engines at Continental Motors, Michigan. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer 1942.
 

The establishment of the Tobin and Judson automotive empire can be traced to 1901 when Ross Judson, a gifted mechanical engineering student, examined a Mercedes L-head four-cylinder engine and noticed a number of inherent flaws. Following on the heels of this discovery was the conviction that he could resolve these issues and vastly improve that engine.

In 1902, almost immediately after graduation from the Armour Institute of Technology, Judson drafted a sales pitch that he presented to his brother in law, A.W. Tobin. His enthusiasm for the project presented against the background of a developing gold rush atmosphere that was the auto industry carried the day and Judson soon had a partner in Tobin, a $2,000 investment of capital from his partner, a hayloft converted to a machine shop in Chicago, and a company named Autocar.

Judson promoted his first engine with an eye-catching display that debuted at the1903 Chicago Automobile Show. Obviously, to display their product at such a prestigious event Judson and Tobin must have had high expectations from this endeavor but the inundation of orders left them overwhelmed and ill prepared.

To fill these initial orders the company launched full-scale production simultaneously with expansion of their fledgling facilities. By 1904, resultant of the exponential increase in orders, Judson and Tobin found themselves in the enviable position of needing to find a location suitable for dramatic expansion.

Numerous communities and municipalities were offering prospective automotive manufactures a wide array of incentives in exchange for establishment of manufacturing facilities. The automotive industry was fast becoming a cash creation dynamo and every town wanted their share of the pie.

Judson and Tobin evaluated a number of communities before allowing themselves to be wooed by the incentive package offered by Muskegon, Michigan, which resulted in the relocation of Autocar operations and the construction of a state of the art, 16,000 square foot factory in that city in 1905. The following year the company experienced equally dramatic changes; Studebaker increased its order from 100 engines to 1,000, discovery that a company in Ardmore, Pennsylvania had used the name Autocar since 1899 led to reorganization under the Continental name, production of a wide array of stationary engines commenced, and the number of employees increased from 25 to almost 600.

One year later the company expanded operations to include an aircraft engine production and development division. This division, as with the rest of the company, would evolve with the rapidly changing technological innovations spurred by the automobile industry and in 1929; it would become a subsidiary, Continental Aircraft Engine with the A-70, a 170 horsepower radial engine, as the foundation.

 
Receipt of an order for 10,000 engines by a new automotive manufacturing concern, Hudson, in late 1910, provided the funding for Continental to launch an ambitious expansion program that included expansion to the Muskegon facility, construction of a factory in Detroit, and the outfitting of both factories with state of the art equipment.