Eddie Rickenbacker was born October 8, 1890, in Columbus, Ohio. Eddie Rickenback was an ace pilot in the WWI and he earned every decoration possible, including the Medal of Honor.

In January of 1922 the first Rickenbacker touring cars, sedans, and coupes made their debut at the New York Auto show. The engine was a three-main- bearing six cylinder, 218 cubic inches, 58 hp with a speed of 60 mph. The cars were vibration less with two flywheels at either end of the crankshaft. This was an idea Rickenbacker had come up with while flying over Germany. He had been amazed at the German planes maneuverability and on inspection of several engines, found a flywheel at the end of the crankshaft. Also new on the Rickenbacker was an experimental chassis with four-wheel brakes. Few people paid much attention to this feature.

By March of 1922, the factory was making 10 Rickenbackers a day. By May, the numbers had increased to 50. Rickenbacker announced on June 27th , 1923 that all Rickenbackers built from now on would have four-wheel brakes. Packard had made the same statement 16 days earlier, but only offered it on their eight-cylinder models. The Rickenbacker was the first medium priced American car with four-wheel brakes. Duesenberg had been the first to offer the option, but Duesenbergs were far from meduim-priced. Buick, Oakland, Cadillac, Marmon, Chalmers, Elgin, Paige and Locomobile were next to jump on four-wheel brake bandwagon. Few people seemed to remember that Rickenbacker had been making cars with four-wheel brakes since 1922, although few models came with the option in 1922.

Car makers who did not offer a four-wheel brake model claimed that four-wheel brakes were dangerous. This campaign hurt Rickenbacker sales slightly, even though there was nothing unsafe about the design. Two companies leading these negative ads were the Ford Motor Company & Studebaker. The main reason for these ads really had nothing to do with the safety of the brakes. Ford & Studebaker had thousands of chassis in stock with two wheel brakes and nothing on the engineering table to start building a car with four wheel brakes. The negative campaign was to slow down the selling of four wheel braking auto’s until their stock piles to two wheel chassis were used up.

Four wheel inside brakes were introduced in 1923. Rickenbacker made an unsuccessful attempt to merge with the British Peerless around 1924. Early six cylinder engines were replaced in 1925 by an eight cylinder engine. The model was named Vertical Eight Super Fine which referred to the advanced proprietary engine and the high quality of the cars.

At the 1926 New York Auto Show the Rickenbacker Motor Company deputed it’s new Super Sport Boattail Coupe for $5000. They claimed it was the fastest production car to carry 4 people at just under 100 mph. Duesenberg, Stutz, Packard could go faster, BUT they could only haul 2 people!! It’s believed less than 20 of these cars were ever produced. He made the super 8 was his sportscar and he only made 7 chassies of these cars, but becausde of the economy he could only made 1 car to take to the auto show and this was the car he actually took.