BOWMAN

Bowman Motor Car Co. (1921-1922)
Covington, Kentucky

This is a Bowman emblem (1921-1922)   tcc
Size: 65mm wide 36mm high    MM: None

The Bowman is listed as a conventional assembled motor car offered as a 5-passenger touring or a 3-passenger roadster but, unusually for a small independent company, it is reported that the Bowman Motor Car Company manufactured its own 4-cylinder 27 hp engine.

There is very little information available about the Bowman Motor Car Company in Covington, Kentucky and no photos showing the Bowman car radiator. Searches of the local Covington and wider Kentucky newspapers did not produce any information about the Bowman car or pictures of the Bowman car or the Bowman factory, if there ever was one, which is surprising if the company manufactured engines and assembled cars in this small community. It was usual in cases of local motor car manufacture for there to be a lot of publicity about the factory where the car was to be built, usually followed by advertisements about the car and invitations to buy stock in the company. However, there is none of this for the Bowman motor car and the available evidence suggests that the Bowman enterprises in Covington, Kentucky had very little available capital to support them.

There was a related Bowman Auto Sales Company in Covington, Kentucky owned by Robert L. Bowman in 1920 and there are motor vehicle sales advertisements from this company for Elcar automobiles and Commerce trucks. 

The Bowman Auto Sales Company was defunct by December 1920, when Robert L. Bowman, his wife Lillian and his brother Rice J. Bowman were arrested and charged with having issued worthless checks, forgery and conversion. Robert L. Bowman was dismissed as president, sales manager and director of the Bowman Auto Sales Company and the company name was changed to the Elcar Sales Company.

Members of the Bowman Auto Sales Company organised a new company called the Bowman Motor Car Company. The Articles of Incorporation of the Bowman Motor Car Company were filed in February 1921 and approved in March 1921. The company planned to engage in the manufacture and sale of automobiles and automobile accessories. However, the capital stock was only $5000, hardly enough for a motor car manufacturer and the only available evidence is that the company operated as an auto sales dealership. The company officers were Soloman Miller and Rice J. Bowman and Robert L. Bowman, the same previous owners of the defunct Bowman Auto Sales Company. 

In July 1921, Robert L. Bowman, president of the Bowman Motor Car Company, was taken to Ohio to face charges of obtaining money by false pretenses at the same time as several cases related to earlier automobile transactions were pending in the Covington Police Court. 

There is no recorded evidence I can find that the Bowman Motor Car Company ever built a car and I cannot find any further news about the Company after July 1921.

In September 1921, Robert L. Bowman, then reported as the former owner of the Bowman Auto Sales Company of Covington, was indicted on seven counts related to fictitious sales of automobiles in Ohio.

The Bowman roadster was shown together with other two, three or four-passenger cars in the January 1922 edition of The Motor, see below:

The Bowman roadster with other cars (1922) The Motor

Bowman Roadster (1922)    The Motor

This photo of a Bowman Roadster is, I believe, the only known photo of a Bowman motor car.

In the light of the documented "history" and shady nature of the owners and officers of the Bowman Auto Sales Company and the Bowman  Motor Car Company, the idea of the Bowman Motor Car Company being an automobile manufacturer making its own engines is fanciful and probably a story put forward by Robert L. Bowman or others to impress motor car reporters. The Bowman Motor Car Company was operating as an auto sales company at the time of the arrest of Robert L. Bowman and then nothing more was heard about the company or the Bowman car.

There was a quite separate Bowman Motor Car Company operating an auto sales business in Hartford, Connecticut at this time. This company appears to have had no links with the Bowman Motor Car Company in Covington, Kentucky.

Emblem

There is certainly a Bowman emblem, see the painted metal emblem shown above at the top of this post. This Bowman emblem appears to be original and is extremely rare.

This emblem may have been attached to cars sold by the Bowman Motor Car Company, as sometimes happened with other motor car sales dealerships.

Another possibility is that Robert L. Bowman had a badge engineering arrangement with Piedmont (see Piedmont) or a similar company which supplied a car they had built, to which a Bowman radiator emblem was attached but I cannot in any way confirm this. 

If you have any further information about the Bowman Motor car or the Bowman emblem, please let me know, in order to update this post.