Kline Kar

Call number: Broadsides 191– :1

The Kline Kar company relocated to Richmond from York, Pennsylvania, in 1912, and produced about 2,500 vehicles before it closed in 1923. The Kline Kar on display at the VHS is the only known passenger model that still exists. As it is displayed in the museum, it is about 75% restored. Prominent Richmond-based African American business owner A.D. Price owned this Kline Kar. He purchased it new and drove it for more than 14,000 miles before he parked it in a carriage house in 1923 after the engine blew up. It stayed in storage until 1972 when it was sold to a private owner. In 1988 Tim Crowder purchased the Kline Kar and started his ten-year-long restoration work. The VHS purchased the car in 2008 (it had already been on loan to the museum and on display in the Story of Virginia exhibit for a decade).

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This video, excerpted from Witness to a Century, discusses how the automobile changed Virginia.

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