For you vintage car nerds, here's a little dive into the history of the Continental Automobile Co. Not the Ford brand or Lincoln model, a completely different car make that only existed 1933-34, with the dandy slogan "Powerful as the Nation." #DavesCarIDService

Continental Motor Co. was founded in 1902, and that's exactly what their business was: making motors. Not cars, just motors. Their were tons of car companies at the time who didn't have resources to make their own motors, so Continental filled that gap as an engine supplier.

Continental was the sole or partial engine supplier to over 100 different car makers, including some well known ones: Auburn, Cord, Ruxton, Durant, Moon, Kaiser, Graham-Paige, Hudson. The also built the earliest production car front wheel drive mechanisms for Ruxton & Cord.

Continental also supplied engines for tractor companies, buses & truck companies, and even Indian motorcycles. They were a supplier of engines for military vehicles too; armored vehicles, and most famously aircraft.

Anyhow, in 1931 one of Continental's customers, Durant, went out of business, and was bought out by Norman DeVaux; his DeVaux-Hall brand (basically a rebadged Durant) went out of business only a year later, owing $500k to Continental for engines.

In the bankruptcy settlement Continental took ownership of DeVaux factories and inventory, and for the first time decided to build their own car. Not a re-badge, but very much updated car with all-steel body and some interesting suspension design. The new Continental debuted 1933

Kind of a weird decision to start a car company at the height of the Depression when lots of car makers were dying, and especially to go into competition against your main customers. Continental had 3 models: the Ace, the Flyer, and the Beacon, low-mid price. Kinda nice looking.

Fewer than 5000 Continental cars were ever made, and the company decided to exit car making in 1934. They are very rare today, maybe a couple hundred left. I know of a hot rod 33 Continental coupe, albeit powered by an injected 1950s Chrysler Hemi.

After their brief foray into car making Continental continued making engines, and were a big military supplier in WW2 and after. Their only other stab at vehicle making was much more successful, the very popular Divco delivery trucks of the 30s-60s.

Continental still exists (sort of) today, as Continental Aerospace Technologies, producing engines for armored vehicles and aircraft. They famously powered Burt Rutan's non stop, no refueling flight around the world in 1986.

Oddly enough now owned by Chinese government.

One last tidbit: a Continental engine powers the world's biggest hot rod, Jay Leno's "Tank Car." Originally built by Randy Grubb as the Blastolene Special, its motor is from a 1956 M47 Patton tank, with twin turbos and injection added by my pal @BanksPower.