LITTLE

Little Motor Car Co. 

Detroit, Michigan (1911)

Flint, Michigan (1912-1913)

Republic Motor Company (1913)

New York City, New York

This is a Little radiator emblem (c1912)    sam
Size: 45mm diameter  MM: Unknown 

The Little was one of the cars that Billy Durant decided to build after he was pushed out of General Motors. The first, experimental Little car was built at the Chevrolet plant in Detroit in November 1911 but was a complicated design and expensive to build. Production of the Little began in January 1912 at the Flint Wagon Works, which had previously produced the Whiting. The first Flint built Little Four appeared in April 1912 and was essentially a re-badged Whiting Model 22. The Little Four body was restyled soon after the first two dozen Little Fours had been built. 

The Little Four was a relatively low-priced 20 hp four-cylinder roadster. A 26 hp Little Six touring car appeared early in 1913. The Little sold well but was not a well made car, whereas the Chevrolet was well made but was too expensive to sell well. 

Billy Durant decided to concentrate on improving the Chevrolet (see Chevrolet) and discontinued the Little in May 1913 after 3,500 had been built, including about 250 units built in New York by the Republic Motor Company, which had been incorporated in 1912 to handle Little car sales and production in New York City.

Emblems

The Little radiator emblem shown above appears on Little advertisements for the Little Four in 1912. This Little radiator emblem is rare.

There is a Pulfer reproduction emblem with this design but it has the word "Little" in black instead of red, see example below:

This is a reproduction Little radiator emblem    ms
Size: 45mm diameter    MM: None

The 1913 brochure for the Little Six shows a radiator emblem in the form of a small "Little" script emblem placed on the front of the radiator tank top, see below. This "Little" script emblem follows the style of the Little Four radiator emblem shown above at the top of this post. Original Little script radiator emblems are very rare.

This is a Little Six brochure illustration showing a script emblem (1913)    sfam

There is another Little radiator emblem with a slightly different design, see example below. This Little radiator emblem is more commonly found but is scarce. I do not know when the emblem design was changed but possibly when the Little body style was changed in mid-1912 or for the Little Four in 1913.

This is a Little car radiator emblem (1912-1913)     sam
Size: 45mm diameter    MM: Childs

This Little radiator emblem can also be found colored blue and red, see example below. This Little radiator emblem is very rare. It is possible that the blue and red emblem was used for the Little Six later in 1913, but I cannot confirm this.

This is a very rare Little radiator emblem (c1913)    sam
Size: 45mm diameter    MM: Unknown

If you know when these different Little emblems were used, please let me know in order to update this post.

Brass "Little" scripts are found and were attached to the radiator core but I have no evidence that these scripts were produced by Little. They may have been made independently.

The following "Little" radiator script follows the same style as the radiator emblem shown above.

This is a Little radiator script (1912-1913)      mjs
Size: 110mm wide

The following "Little" radiator script is much larger and more closely follows the style of the radiator emblem shown at the top of this post.

This is a Little radiator script (c1912)     mjs
Size: 392mm wide

Original Little radiator scripts are scarce.