Engine – 4¼-Liter Water-Cooled Horizontal Two-Cylinder
Transmission – Two-Speed manual
Drivetrain – Double Chain Drive
Horsepower – 20 HP
Chassis – No. 3452
Body – Five-Passenger Rear-Entrance Tonneau
Weight – Approximately 2,300 pounds
Production – Approximately 900 Winton automobiles produced in 1904

"Gentlemen – THE KING!"

The Winton Motor Carriage Company emerged during the formative period of the American automobile, when neither the motorcar’s mechanical form nor its place in society had been firmly established. Alexander Winton, a Scottish-born engineer and bicycle manufacturer, completed his first experimental automobile in Cleveland in 1896 and organized the Winton Motor Carriage Company the following year. By 1898, the company had begun selling automobiles through an orderly production system, helping move the motorcar from experimental workshops toward organized manufacture.

Winton’s influence extended beyond the automobiles bearing his name. James Ward Packard purchased the twelfth Winton built but reportedly found the car unreliable. Winton dismissed Packard’s suggestions for improvement and challenged him to build a better automobile—an exchange that helped prompt the creation of the Packard Motor Car Company. Winton also declined to employ Henry Ford, who subsequently continued his experiments in Detroit. Ford’s 1901 racing victory over Winton later provided the credibility and financial support that contributed to his own manufacturing ventures.

Winton automobiles also helped define the language and culture of early motoring. During an 1899 journey from Cleveland to New York, journalist Charles Shanks described the Winton in which he was traveling as an “automobile,” an account credited with introducing the French term into American usage. Competition further demonstrated the capabilities of Winton engineering, culminating in January 1904 when Barney Oldfield drove Bullet No. 2 at a reported 83.7 miles per hour over a measured mile at Daytona Beach.
The marque’s most consequential achievement, however, came through endurance rather than outright speed. In 1903, Dr. H. Nelson Jackson and mechanic Sewall K. Crocker drove a 20-horsepower, two-cylinder Winton from San Francisco to New York. Completed in 63 days, the journey was the first successful transcontinental crossing by automobile and demonstrated that the motorcar could become a practical instrument of independent travel. Their Winton, named Vermont, employed the same basic mechanical arrangement subsequently represented by the 1904 20 HP model.

The 1904 Winton 20 HP Rear-Entrance Tonneau emerged directly from this period of experimentation and public demonstration. Built during the final year of Winton’s twin-cylinder line, it represents the developed form of the automobile that had carried Jackson and Crocker across the continent one year earlier.
The automobile in the Singleton Collection, chassis 3452, is reported to have been purchased new by the Mulnix family of Bono, Ohio. A photograph published in the 2004 Winton Bullet’n depicts the family with the car near Lake Erie in 1909. Recovered without its original seats during the 1950s, it subsequently passed through several collectors before Leonard Davis located an original Winton seating assembly.
Its long-term owners acquired the automobile in 1992 and began a research-led restoration the following year. Working with Winton specialists, including Peter Kesling, they prepared detailed component drawings and recreated missing wooden elements using individually machined patterns. The restoration was finished in 1998.

In 2003, the Winton participated in the Medicine Bow-to-Laramie portion of a reenactment commemorating the centenary of Jackson and Crocker’s transcontinental journey. It later completed the New London-to-New Brighton Antique Car Run on several occasions, documenting its continued operability in long-distance veteran-car use.

As a surviving 20-horsepower twin-cylinder Winton, chassis 3452 provides a tangible cultural link to the period in which the automobile began to carve its defining place within American life.