"I was browsing last week on Shorpy (www.shorpy.com) looking at vintage photographs of just about anything under the sun when I came across these two images of Custer cars. The Custer car was an early alternative fuel car and you can see from the pictures that it looked as if it came from Munchkin Land.
Custer Specialty Car Company began producing electric cars and wheelchairs in Dayton, Ohio, in 1920. The founder, L. Luzern Custer, was an invalid, hence the three-wheeled electric wheelchair production. Custer had actually developed an electric-powered prototype vehicle before the turn of the century. Both of these images would be of the Custer Park Car model and some were used as an amusement park ride in places such as LeSourdsville Lake, Ohio, for many years. Custer also produced other models in the 1930s. A child’s Cootie Car which was offered in toy catalogs, a miniature railroad car called a Cabbie, a mini-truck called a Carrier, and at least one two-passenger coupe. These cars were powered by four batteries and could run for about 10 miles before re-charging. They could run on any road or track surface available, which made them easy for carnivals to set up on an abandoned parking lot, and top speed was only about 8 mph. Gas models were also produced, though a majority of production was electric.
The company produced the Custer “Statoscope” for the Navy during World War II, doing their part for the war effort. The Custer Company was still in existence in the Dayton area well into the early 1960s with their last electric offering, the two-passenger buckboard model, introduced in 1958. You can view other Custer Park Cars in action at http://www.americanaamusementpark.com/custer.htm and further information is available from Curt Dalton’s 1996 article in the Dayton Business Journal http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/1996/11/04/editorial2.html
And check out other photos of vintage cars at Shorpy when you have a few minutes to browse. It’s a great website to visit."