Every gearhead known as Detroit’s Big Three, but there are other American carmakers out there.

Since the early days of the automobile, there have been obscure brands that never really took off, went bankrupt, merged with other companies, or chose to stay small and make a niche product.

We’ll look at 13 American carmakers, new and old, that most gearheads have never heard of. Some of them are even still operational.

Rossion Automotive

Image Credit: Mecum.

Rossion Automotive, based in Riviera Beach, Florida, closed its doors in 2021, but before that, it built the Q1 sports car. It was essentially a more luxurious version of the British Noble M400.

Rossion never intended to become a large-scale car company, but after only selling 89 cars, the company shut down. A shame, seeing as the Rossion Q1 was an excellent car with a mid-mounted, turbocharged Ford V6 engine producing 508 hp.

Lucra Cars

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Lucra Cars is the brainchild of Luke Richards, an American entrepreneur who wanted to build a Euro-style, retro sports car that’s powered by all-American muscle in the form of a 6.3-liter LS3 or a 7.0-liter LS7 V8.

Lucra handbuilt the LC470, and it looks stunning. It’s also quite rare, and can keep up with proper supercars, but some have sold at auctions for “just” $150,000. The company website is currently not fully functional, suggesting Lucra is no longer operating at 100%.

Drakan

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California-based Drakan is another American car manufacturer only dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts know about. The company and its Spyder sports car became an overnight sensation after appearing on Jay Leno’s Garage. Sadly, Drakan only built a handful of Spyders.

Drakan used a formula similar to the Ariel Atom, KTM X-Bow, and BAC Mono. The Spyder is a lightweight, track-focused, open-top sports car. Unlike those other cars, it is powered by a massive LS3 V8 engine.

7Fifteen Motorworks

Image Credit: 7Fifteen Motorworks.

7Fifteen Motorworks was born when John Kendall and his father wanted to recreate a classic hot rod known as the 1959 Troy Roadster.

7Fifteen Motorworks ended up creating the Troy Indy Special, which looks like a mix between a vintage IndyCar racer, a Shelby Cobra, and a Lotus Super 7, and it’s powered by an LS3 V8. The best part is that they offer it as a turnkey model. If you want one, you better act fast, as production is limited to 33 cars.

Equus Automotive

Image Credit: Equus Automotive.

Equus Automotive is based in Michigan, and gearheads may have heard of their retro-tastic creations, such as the Equus Bass 770, a modern-day vehicle that combines some of the best classic muscle cars in a cool, retro-styled package.

That’s not the only vehicle Equus has created, though. There’s also the Throwback, based on the C7 Corvette, it’s another retro-styled sports car, and they’ve even announced some 4×4 SUV projects.

Rezvani Motors

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Based in Irvine, California, Rezvani Motors was founded by Iranian-American Ferris Rezvani in 2013. Rezvani didn’t waste any time, and just two years later, the production version of the Rezvani Beast was unveiled.

From there, they went on to build an extreme utility vehicle named Tank, the Hercules 6×6 truck, and the Vengeance full-size off-road SUV.

Vanderhall Motor Works

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Vanderhall Motor Works was founded in 2010 and is based in Provo, Utah. The company doesn’t build traditional cars, instead, it manufactures hand-made three-wheelers.

Vanderhall launched its first three-wheeler in 2016, and while most gearheads agree that three-wheeled cars usually don’t have the best handling, Vanderhall’s creations are designed for sports driving, touring, commuting and city driving.

Falcon Motorsports

Image Credit: Falcon Motorsports.

Falcon Motorsports was founded by Jeff Lemke in Holly, Michigan, in 2009. The company garnered considerable attention with its high-performance cars, such as the Falcon F5 and Falcon F7.

Journalists and test drivers loved the Falcon F7 supercar, and it was even featured on the Discovery TV show, How It’s Made: Dream Cars. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to keep the dream alive, and in the end, only seven Falcon F7s were made. In 2021, the entire company was for sale for $675,000.

Stout Engineering Laboratories

Image Credit: Jim Evans – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wiki Commons.

In 1932, Stout was founded by William Stout. He had previously worked for Packard’s plane-building division, decided to put his aerospace skills to use, and began constructing a spacious and aerodynamic vehicle.

The result was the Stout Scarab, which some consider the predecessor of the modern-day minivan. There aren’t any records of how many Scarabs were built, but it’s at least five because that’s the number of cars that are still around today, and some say nine were built. None of them were identical, and they were only sold to selected customers.

Gaylord

Image Credit: Buch-t – CC BY-SA 3.0/Wiki Commons.

In the 1950s, brothers James and Edward Gaylord wanted to create their own legacy. Their father was the inventor of the bobby pin, so the Gaylord brothers had plenty of money to start a new business. They decided to build the most luxurious car the world had ever seen — the Gaylord Gladiator.

Questionable name aside, the Gaylord Gladiator was highly innovative and luxurious, but it was never meant to be. Between 1955 and 1957, four Gladiators were made, including prototypes. It’s believed that only two examples built by Zeppelin survived. One can be seen at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and the other is privately owned in the States.

Playboy

Image Credit: By Craig Howell – CC BY 2.0/Wiki Commons.

In 1947, Louis Horowitz and Charles Thomas, two car dealers, decided to start their own New York-based car brand. They came up with the Playboy name six years before Hugh Hefner’s magazine debuted with the same name. Fun fact: Hefner decided to use the Playboy name after Eldon Sellers suggested it. Sellers’ mother had previously worked for Playboy Automobiles.

The company launched a three-seater convertible with a folding metal roof decades before that became a thing in the late 1990s. It was actually quite popular, but by 1951, production ended, and the company closed its doors.

Kurtis

Image Credit: Lou Costabile/YouTube.

In the late 1940s, famous race car designer Frank Kurtis wanted to build his own sports car. Between 1949 and 1955, Kurtis found around 36 buyers for these streamlined, fiberglass-bodied creations, and then he sold the license for the design to Earl “Madman” Muntz.

The cars were often fitted with eight-cylinder Ford engines, but pretty much any engine that was available at the time could fit under the hood.

Henney

Image Credit: dave_7 – CC BY 2.0/Wiki Commons.

Tesla got its start by turning a Lotus Elise into an electric sports car, but that wasn’t the first time an American carmaker used that formula. Henney, an Illinois-based company that used to convert Packards into ambulances and hearses, wanted to do something different.

After joining forces with the National Union Electric Company, Henney turned a Renault Dauphine into an electric car and named it Kilowatt. After installing all the batteries, the Kilowatt weighed 2,245 lbs, a substantial increase over the Dauphine’s 1,397 lbs, and the price more than doubled, to $3,600.

Author: Andre Nalin

Expertise: Automotive

Over the last decade, Andre has worked as a writer and editor for multiple car and motorcycle publications, but he has reverted to freelancing these days. He has accumulated a ton of seat time on both two and four wheels, and has even found the time and money to build magazine-featured cars.

Image Credit: Andre Nalin.

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