The Derby: Pride of the Prairies
One of the rarest cars ever made in Canada was the Derby, produced in Saskatoon in the 1920s.
Only a few were built – and only two are known to survive to this day.
The Derby's story begins in Winnipeg, where Louis Arsenault and three partners started Winnipeg Motor Cars Ltd. in 1920. Rather than build from scratch, they imported cars from the U.S. and made a few changes.
The firm started with little-known Hatfield cars, which were shipped in pieces to Winnipeg from Sidney, N.Y.
The transformation of a Hatfield into a Winnipeg included installing a new radiator that was guaranteed not to burst from freezing.
The new name and logo were proudly displayed on the rad. The emblem bore a yellow sheaf of wheat, surrounded by the words "As Good As the Wheat."
Each car came with a set of chains, to improve traction in winter.
The partners soon switched from the Hatfield to the Davis, made in Richmond, Ind., as a basis for the Winnipeg.
Estimates of how many Winnipegs were assembled range from 10 all the way to 500.
But the firm encountered financial problems and, in the fall of 1923, it folded.
Although his three partners faded from the picture, Arsenault wasn't ready to give up on the car business.
He continued to have unassembled Davis cars shipped in for completion and a new name – this time, the Derby.
Derbys competed with Chevrolets and Fords in both style and size, but were a bit more expensive, starting at around $1,750.
After making a few of the cars in Winnipeg, Arsenault decided to move to Saskatoon, taking over a vacant building that had been used to make tractors.
The Derby made no attempt to hide the fact that it was a Canadian version of a U.S. car. Derby is "a new name – not a new car" and "Davis in the United States, Derby in Canada," said promotional literature of the day.
An ad in the February 1925 edition of The Western Woman and Rural Home put it this way:
The management of the Derby Motor Car Co. have brought the Davis car in to Canada at a great saving, by importing the knocked-down units, thereby saving much duty, freight, taxes, equipment, etc., and have been able to put a car on the market equal to the best in the United States.
The Davis, built in Richmond from 1908 to 1928, had two-tone paint schemes before the idea was popular with other firms.
The cars also bore some interesting names – which showed up on Derby versions – including Man O' War and Legionnaire.
But Davis sales dropped off in the late 1920s because the firm lacked the volume to compete with the huge rivals such as General Motors and Ford.
Various sources say between 31 and 50 Derby cars were assembled before operations were halted due to slow sales in 1927.
Company officials quickly left town and were never heard from again.
A few years ago, a prominent Saskatoon businessman, the late Cec Wheaton, recalled a boyhood expedition to the abandoned Derby factory in 1927, when he and two buddies found their way through an unlooked door.
Those memories are captured by Noelle Grosse in the book Museum Gold, published by the Saskatchewan Western Development Museum in Saskatoon:
Along the north wall of the factory were about a dozen Derby car frames, stacked on end and painted black.
The boys ventured upstairs, where they found a scene that Wheaton describes as eerie and sad.
The Derby company board room was located on the second floor of the factory. "There was a huge table," Wheaton says.
Papers were stacked neatly around the table as if waiting for board members to return.
"It looked like they just got up from the meeting, and left," he says.
The stacks of papers included letters from Saskatchewan people who had invested in the company and were anxious for word on their savings.
"I remember one letter from a widow who had invested all her money in the company," Wheaton says.
"She was writing to say that she was expecting dividends and hadn't received any."
Even though the Derby didn't succeed, the idea of making cars in Saskatchewan wasn't really so far-fetched.
A little over a year after Derby went out of business in Saskatoon, GM opened an assembly plant in Regina to make cars for western Canada.
The plant shut down during the early 1930s, as the Depression deepened, but reopened later in the decade, before it became a munitions plant during World War II.
That former GM factory still stands today and serves as offices housing small firms.
Of the two Derby autos known to exist, one is in the Western Development Museum.
The museum obtained the unrestored 1926 Derby sedan in 1971 from Frank Thompson of Readlyn, Sask.
One of the museum's directors at that time had earlier bought stock in Derby Motors, "and so he wanted the museum to get a Derby car," Thompson recalled in an interview last fall.
He traded his Derby to the institution in exchange for a 1909 Overland.
He later found another Derby – a 1925 convertible, a highly desirable model despite its poor condition – at a scrap dealer's.
He bought it and hopes to restore it someday.
The building that was home to the Derby Motor Car Co. later became a meat-processing plant.
Late last year, Maple Leaf Foods announced it will close the plant within three years.
The building that was once the site of Saskatoon's brief attempt to make cars is expected to be demolished.
wheels@thestar.ca
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