Happy MLK Day! We’re Mostly Off Today, But Here’s A Car Called Martin

Hey pals! Happy Martin Luther King day, and, like last year we’re giving everyone the day off. Mostly. There will be a few posts. Last year, to commemorate this important day, I found a car named King; this year, I’d like to tell you about a car named Martin. Perhaps next year I’ll mention a car named Luther. We’ll just have to see! I’m not sure this sort of thing is really an appropriate tribute to a truly great man, but, well, we are a car site, and I promise my intentions are good. So let’s look at Martin, maker of some deeply and wonderfully weird cars.

The Martin company is one that I suspect you’ve actually heard of, just in a very different context. The company was primarily an aircraft maker, and if you’ve heard of Lockheed Martin, then you know that the company, in some form, is still around and active today, making all sorts of aerospace vehicles and and drones and weapons and that sort of thing. But it all started in 1917 as the Glenn L. Martin company.

Glenn Martin was an aviation pioneer, starting his flying career in 1909, and hist first aircraft company (which he sold to the Wright siblings) in 1912. But even though his passion was flight, he also had an interest in cars.

Specifically, building cars with techniques used to build airplanes: lightweight materials, aerodynamics, that sort of thing. Mostly good ideas, though some, like using spring-less aircraft style suspension that relied on bungee cords, maybe less so.

The 1928 Martin Aerodynamic was such a car, an aerodynamic, aluminum, rear-engined, one-door’d prototype that never really drove all that great and, while fascinating, never made it to production. In 1932, Martin tried again, a bit more modest approach, with a smaller, three-wheeled car called the Martinette, like a little Martin, not like, you know, a strict jerk.

Like the Aerodynamic, the Martinette failed to interesting financial backers or the public, though that front door and general layout would be seen about 20 years later on the Iso and then later BMW Isetta. So maybe it had some influence?

Martin made one final attempt at a car in 1950, and while it seems to owe a lot to the Marinette, this one was vastly weirder, mostly because of the materials. It was called the Stationette, and it was built like a log cabin:

This car was supposed to be the economy car of the future, a cheap car – $995, which is only about $12,000 today – for the masses, and yes, it looked like someone took the middle chunk out of a woody wagon and set it free. The choice of timber for the main body panels may have been a cost-saving measure, but it sure gave the car a distinctive look.

I actually got to drive this bonkers thing about a decade ago, and it was deeply strange, wonderful, and terrible, my three favorite traits. It has theater-style seats with that spring-loaded lower cushion, 3/4 of a steering wheel, and a generator engine at the rear. Oh, and that same weird bungee-cord suspension as the other two cars.

Here, you can watch me drive it and listen to me talk about it!

I also just found out it’s currently on loan to a museum not too far from me, so maybe I’ll go pay a visit to my old pal! It’s strange and fun to see cars you’ve driven in museum contexts. Makes you feel like a big shot, like seeing a Rothko and knowing you drove it, once.

I hope you enjoyed being reminded of these Martin cars, and I hope you’ll have a fantastic MLK day, too. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled nonsense tomorrow!