Age: just a Number; 1932 DETROIT ELECTRIC MODEL 97.(Escape Roads)

Byline: BOB TOMAINE

To automakers 100 years ago, electric cars were perfectly reasonable, with elegant operation and design offsetting their limited range and the rarity of charging facilities.

Anderson Carriage Co. of Detroit exemplified that thinking with its 1907 Detroit Electric, an unpretentious runabout that launched an initially successful line. Production of nine models on two wheelbases topped 1000 in 1910, and by 1912, 12 models on four wheelbases cost $2,000 to $3,750.

Even when Charles Kettering's starter that year made gasoline-engine cars almost as easy to start as electrics, Detroits continued to sell, but electrics were doomed. Gasoline cars were improving, and electrics still lacked range and on-the-road support. Detroit Electric sales dropped from more than 4500 cars in 1914 to fewer than 200 in 1920 and never recovered. That the company would not quit produced a strange development after its 1929 bankruptcy.

"Alfred Dunk bought all the assets,'' said Bill Mackey, whose 1932 Model 97 is shown here. "He still had people ordering cars, so he went out and bought up all the old Detroit Electrics that he could find, brought them back to the factory, chopped the tops six inches, put on new fenders, new wheels, new bumpers, and shipped them out as brand-new 1932, 1933, 1934 Detroit Electrics.''

In 1929, Mackey said, 88 Detroit Electrics were built. For 1931, production fell to 23, and Mackey's was the first of seven built in 1932. It had been a 1918 model before it was a 1932, and he bought it six years ago in running condition. With ...