Post by Hyman Ltd.

The Roamer Motor Car Company was founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1917 as the result of a collaboration between industry veterans Cloyd Kenworthy, a New York City distributor of Rauch & Lang electric cars, and Albert C. Barley, an automaker who built the Barley and Halladay automobiles in Streator, Illinois. Barley brought Karl H. Martin into the project, a New York body constructor and designer of the Halladay. Kenworthy’s motivation was to offer a petrol-powered automobile of sufficient quality to sell alongside his Rauch & Lang Electrics. Dissatisfied with the cars available, he set out to build his own. The Roamer was an “assembled car” utilizing major components from outside suppliers, yet it was well-built and expensive, each produced to individual specifications. The very deliberate and rather shameless imitation of the Rolls-Royce radiator shell (the “RoameR” logo was no coincidence) seemed to work as intended, attracting a respectable number of buyers during their 13-year tenure, including prominent stars like Mary Pickford and Buster Keaton. Since it was a component car, Roamer could offer buyers various engines throughout production. The vast majority of vehicles hit the road with conventional Rutenber or Continental six-cylinder units. However, a handful of buyers opted for the costly yet magnificent Rochester-Duesenberg Walking Beam Four, one of the most potent and advanced road car engines of the time. Experts believe that of the 11,800 Roamers produced, fewer than 1,000 were equipped with this marvelous and exotic race-bred engine. Click to learn more > http://ow.ly/mmF450GaB4O