The Tunison Speed Roadster - "an airplane on wheels"
At the Spring AutoLitFest 2017 held on the grounds of the NHRA museum, the author spied a period brochure for the virtually unknown Tunison automobile for sale on one of the vendor tables, but when he returned to try to buy it, the small (3 inches by 5 inches) multi-page ultra-rare folded Tunison brochure was gone. The Tunison was a car built in Oakland California in 1921 which apparently never got beyond the prototype phase.
The car’s namesake, Murray Cuthbert (M C) Tunison, was born March 2 1877 in Jacksonville Illinois but he spent much of his life in California. Tunison began in engine design around the age of 20 and around the turn of the twentieth century he offered a line of gasoline and kerosene powered engines under the “Success” nameplate for use on the farm and for marine applications via catalogue sales from his Los Angeles California factory. Tunison’s small stationary engine used two large cast iron disks enclosed inside a heavy steel channel frame driven by a heavy I-beam connecting rod that rode in phosphor bronze bearings driven by a hit-and-miss single cylinder engine.
Tunison made his first foray into the automobile trade as he formed the Pacific Motor and Automobile Company with partners H. L. Boyer and W. B. Harrington in June 1906 to build an air-cooled 8-cylinder 86-horsepower car known as the Coyote. The engine designed by Tunison was reportedly made up of two rows of four cylinders set at an angle of 90 degrees to each other.
In December 1908 it was announced that the lightweight “Coyote Special” roadster demonstrator prototype was completed and being tested while Pacific Motor was building a new garage in Redondo California. At that time of the factory announcement the Los Angeles Herald reported that “the company is well financed and will not be handicapped in getting out its product for lack of capital” but by April 1909 the company was in financial trouble and the company soon folded.
Tunison like many others became fascinated with the rapidly emerging aviation field and in 1910 he leased Dominguez Field an early airport located near modern day Carson California. In May 1911 Murray and George B Harrison the President of the Aero Club of California proposed that the US Congress set aside a fund of $150,000 devoted to the development of aviation. Tunison and Harrison’s plan called for the fund to pay aviators a dollar per mile flown with the provision that he “placed his services at the command of the government whenever there was a call for them.”
Tunison was involved in the organization and promotion of the second International Air Meet held at Dominguez Field in December 1910 that featured Wright brothers’ exhibition team with pilots Archibald Hoxsey, Walter Brookins and Philip Parmelee. During 1911, Tunison moved to Northern California and the November 1911 issue of Aircraft magazine reported that Tunison was “constructing a large monoplane of his own design which he intends to try out shortly.” The plane’s overall design was described as “to carry two persons and has a spread of 59 feet and length of 54 feet” powered by an engine of 125 horsepower. What came of this Tunison monoplane is unknown.
The following year, Tunison was named the manager of the new Aeronautical Corporation in San Rafael a firm that employed fourteen workmen. One of the first projects was a biplane built for noted aviation French pioneer Didier Masson with the goal of Masson flying the new aircraft over the Sierra mountain range. Masson, who had earlier flown from San Francisco to Oakland and became the first man to fly an airplane across San Francisco Bay, and Tunison hoped to sell copies of the biplane to the United States military.
The new biplane’s first flight at the San Rafael airfield in March 1912 was mostly successful, that is until a skid broke off while landing and the plane rolled over into the soft mud but Masson emerged uninjured. In April 1912 Masson in the repaired Tunison creation carried fifty copies of the San Francisco Call newspaper from San Rafael to Vallejo and he became known as the “newsboy of the clouds.”
In August 1912 Tunison started construction of a new larger aircraft which a writer in the San Francisco Call identified as “the largest biplane in the west.” The writer revealed that he had surreptitiously measured the craft with a yardstick and listed the dimensions as a wingspan of 60 feet a length of 42 ½ feet and body with a 3-1/2 foot depth designed to hold two persons. The biplane was powered by a 120-horsepower engine which drove triple propellers one in the nose of the plane and one of each side of the cockpit between the wings. One fascinating futuristic feature of this design was the placement of the gasoline tanks inside the wings.
The power of the massive Tunison-designed engine was needed as the plane was designed for commercial use to carry freight to far-off locales such as Sacramento, Bakersfield, and San Diego, although Tunison admitted that one of the drawbacks with the plan was “the lack of suitable landing places”. The author could find no further information on Tunison’s large commercial biplane.
Murray Tunison had a fertile inventive mind which was demonstrated in May 1918 as he and a partner Samuel Nunn filed a patent application for an invention which was entitled “tractor attachment for automobiles.” A car’s front axle and front and rear wheels would be removed and replaced with mounted “traction belts” with the driven axle of the automobile geared to drive the traction belts. The pair’s creation received patent US 1356945A in October 1920, but by that the time, Tunison was totally immersed in the design and construction of his next venture, an eponymous automobile with the prototype revealed in late March 1921.
The prototype Tunison automobile was powered by a V-type 8-cylinder engine with overhead valves and a pressurized oiling system which it was claimed would propel the car to a startling 70 miles per hour while it average 30 miles per gallon of gasoline as a result of a 1600-pound curb weight.
The most important engineering detail of the Tunison’s design was that its frame and body were made of laminated spruce, which led to the description of the car as “an airplane on wheels.” Plans were to initially build 250 per month cars built completely on site except for the bearings and the electrical components. Production was projected to grow to 1000 cars a month from the new factory to be built on the east side of Oakland. Publicity claimed that Murray Tunison “designed and built 380 engines of all sizes, ranging from 2 to 600-horsepower” and that he held US patent #57800 for the design of the speedster body.
An article in the Oakland Tribune stated that “laminated spruce is 65 per cent stronger than steel of the same weight and 60 per cent lighter than steel of the same strength. Its use in automobile construction as fabricated by the “Tunison process” provides lightness and strength, freedom from vibration, absence of squeaks and rattles and furthermore admits designs not possible with metal bodies.” The Oakland Tribune article stated that “it is a well-known fact that steel transmits shocks, while wood absorbs them” which makes Tunison’s use of steel wheels surprising.
The car’s frame was built of five layers of spruce cemented with waterproof glue under high pressure while the laminated wood body was built in a mold and covered with Fabrikoid imitation leather manufactured by DuPont which was cotton cloth coated with nitrocellulose. The Tunison catalog at AutoLitFest 2017 showed a Tunison Speed Roadster and a Tunison Touring car with a cost of $1250 for the roadster & $1350 for the touring car.
The Tunison Motor Company was incorporated in Oakland in April 1921 with a reported $2,500,000 in capital stock to be offered to the public. In August 1921 Tunison General Manager Clifford Williams announced that the East Side Board of Trade had secured an option on $1,250,000 worth of the company's stock. Williams claimed the company is “determined to make Oakland the home of the Tunison. Bringing the Tunison factory to Oakland will encourage other industries to seek manufacturing sites in the City.”
A little more than a month later Williams filed suit against the Tunison Motor Company as he claimed breach of contract. Williams hired on June 28 1921 for $100 a week and a promise of a 20 5 commission on all stock sold. On September 28 Williams claimed that Mr. Tunison and LP Hughes entered his office, “rifled his desk and changed the combination of his safe.” Williams claimed that Tunison’s misleading statements to banks had caused the California State Commission of Corporations to issue a warning to investors concerning the company’s stock offers.
Despite the warnings in November 1921 it was announced that all the $2,500,000 in stock had been sold and that Tunison would build its modern automobile factory in Oakland which would provide employment to 3000 men. A one-story concrete reinforced building that measured 150 feet by 450 feet with a value of $250,000 was scheduled to begin construction immediately. The Tunison corporate office had moved from its original location in room 317 in the three-story Thayer Building located at the southeast corner of 14th and Jefferson Streets in downtown Oakland to the Pacific Building a 5-story brick building at the corner of 16th and Jefferson.
The November 15 1921 issue of Motor West magazine revealed the results of the election of Tunison Motor Company officers and Board of Directors. A W Beam, the President of the Hayward Chamber of Commerce was named the company president with George Reuben, Phoenix automobile distributor and vice president of National Automobile Dealers Association as Tunison’s general and sales manager.
The prominent name on the board of directors was John Paul Rettenmayer, the President of the California Brewing Association and the owner of Acme Brewing Company, the Cereal Products Refining Company, manufacturers of malt syrups, as well as Peerless Yeast, Peerless Vinegar and the Remar Company of Oakland, makers of Remar Bread and Remar Candy.
Other board members included JD Howell an engineer with the Union Ice Company of San Francisco and a pair of attorneys - EW Davis and James M Oliver who was the legal advisor for the California state banking commission. The Board membership also included three contractors - JJ Stahl of San Francisco and C U Cunningham and BT James of Oakland.
The Tunison automobile failed for unknown reasons without any cars built beyond the prototype, and Murray Tunison dropped from the public eye for several years but he did receive a patent in 1925 for his design for a car storage garage Tunison’s invention showed that automobiles would be stored on a group of independent floor panels riding on horizontally movable trucks operating on each floor. The insertion and removal of the automobiles would be achieved through the use of an elevator mounted in a fixed shaft.
In 1929 the Santa Ana Register reported that members of a US Naval investigating board led by Admiral Moffatt stopped at Eddie Martin’s Airport to meet the local aviator and to look over a new type airplane housed at the field. The plane which attracted their attention was a low-wing, streamlined, enclosed cabin, monoplane built of plywood named the Tunison Scout.
The blue and red trimmed 4-passanger Tunison Scout was built during 1928 by Murray and his son both of Fullerton featured a 36 foot wing span and was built of molded plywood excluding the 150-horsepower water-cooled Hispano-Suiza H-3 engine mountings and fittings. There were no internal spars for bracing of the wings as the entire wing section consisted of layers of laminated plywood. The plywood wing was nearly 2 feet thick at the intersection with the fuselage and the seats for the occupants of the cockpit were attached to the wing.
The Scout won a design award, was test flown during in December 1928 by famed aviator Jimmie Angel and was featured in an article in the July 1929 issue of Aviation magazine but it never received the required certificate from the Department of Commerce. Tunison’s company later was purchased by Pacific Air Industries and the company installed a new engine and intended to offer two additional models - a two-place Scout Junior and a seven-passenger Scout Cruiser, but those plans never materialized.
A few years later Murray Tunison was the featured speaker in a three-part lecture series on aerodynamics presented to the Fullerton Hawks a group of young aircraft model builders. In his later years Murray lived in Chico California and researched and wrote a book about the mining of uranium before he passed away in 1953 in Utah.
If any readers have a copy of the Tunison ephemera that you would be willing to sell, please contact the author at kevracerhistory@aol.com
