The saga of Sears cars.

"not for canada - australian in disguise" (for-canada) 06/13/2020 at 23:11 • Filed to: SEARS

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If you’re a fan of obscure, weird cars, chances are you know of the 1952-1954 Allstate. If you aren’t aware, it was essentially a Kaiser Henry J, a cheap affordable small runabout. Henry J. Kaiser, the man, not the car, approached the Sears-Roebuck company to sell his car in their stores and their monolithic catalogue. Back then, it really made a lot of sense. The Sears catalogue was, as any Boomer will tell you, the Amazon of it’s day. You could buy pretty much anything your heart desired with just a quick mail order, and pick it up at any Sears store in a couple of weeks.

Sears’ image as a retailer also fit the Henry J quite well. Sears back then was a much cheaper and “lower-class” retailer compared to the other department stores of the time, and their clientele would likely be much more interested in a cheap reliable car compared to the patrons of higher-end department stores. Remember, this was before the ubiquity of discount stores like Walmart and Target. You did have five-and-dime stores like Woolworth and Kresge, but they weren’t fully fledged department stores like the Woolco and K-Mart chains they would eventually spawn. Either way, the Allstate made sense. Sales were lacklustre however, mainly due to people just continuing to go to dedicated dealers to buy a car instead of Sears. Sears was for buying church clothes and tools and these new-fangled electricity-powered vacuum floor cleaners. Not cars.

The Allstate wasn’t Sears-Roebuck’s first attempt at selling a car however. Enter the Sears High Wheeler. Another rebadge, this time of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (no, not that one) built in Sears’ home turf of Chicago. The cars were only available via catalogue, as Sears didn’t yet have the department store presence they would develop after the Second World War. The car was sold between 1908 and 1912, and was once again rather well suited to Sears’ budget-conscious customers. Sears’ catalogue service had big pull in rural areas, since they didn’t have big fancy department stores, and the large-wheels, cheap price, and toughness of the Sears was well suited to rural customers. This was before the Model T really took off, mind you.

Despite this though, the Sears was quite outdated, even for the early 1910s. One wouldn’t be stupid for confusing it with a much earlier pre-1900 car like a Duryea or an early De Dion-Bouton. Steering was still done via tiller instead of a more conventional steering wheel, and the carriage-like construction made it basically as outdated at the time as the Nissan Frontier is now. It was also quite slow, with a top speed of 25 MPH at a time when a Ford could get to the blistering speed of 45. Hence it’s discontinuation in 1912, leaving rural car buyers to be snapped up by Ford.

The first two are relatively well known, but there was a very obscure third attempt by Sears to get into the car business. Enter the XDH-1. Calling it an attempt by Sears to get into the car business might be a bit disingenuous however, as it was a prototype likely never intended for series production.

Rather, it was a showcase of the technology of Sears’ DieHard battery brand that was built in 1977. It started out as it’s life as a surprisingly exotic (by Sears standards) Fiat 128 coupé. They stripped out the engine and replaced it with a bank of 20 DieHard marine batteries, providing an amount of power that I can’t quite find any specific information about. They also gave it a rather Vauxhall Firenza-esque droop snoot front end, making it look quite a bit more futuristic than the regular 128.

The XDH-1 was really quite a good EV for it’s time. But really that’s like saying you have a particularly good kind of cancer. It’s still cancer. And the XDH-1 is still a 70s EV, in the days before the EV-1 and Elon Musk, this is the pinnacle of electric cars. Unlike other electric cars of the time like the Citicar, it was capable highway speeds, reaching a top speed of about 70 MPH in the days when Americans were limited to 55 on interstates. And, being based on a contemporary Fiat, it was roomy enough to carry humans and was basically a really quiet, slow car. Range was honestly also quite impressive for the time, getting anywhere between 60-90 miles on a charge according to Sears. Once again, not mindblowing by today’s standards, but quite excellent for the time.

The XDH-1, like I said, was never really meant to be a serious production car. If it were to be produced, it would’ve likely been to expensive to catch anyone’s eye. Especially not if they sold it at Sears. If it was sold, could it have meant EVs would become a more serious prospect, sooner? Likely not, but it’s fun to imagine a world where EVs are mainstream by the 90s. Instead though, the XDH-1 was quietly forgotten about apart from a few weirdos like me and the idea of electric cars would be abandoned again once the oil crises subsided in the early 80s, leaving the GM Impact concept to revive interest in the idea, and we all know how that saga ended.

And now Sears are gone too, likely to fade into the history books along with their automotive creations. It’s funny how such a previously forward-thinking company can suddenly do a complete 180 and drive themselves into the ground. Sears were ahead of their time with mail-order, which we now call Amazon, they had an actually kinda drivable EV in the 70s, and they were one of the first companies to truly embrace video games in their partnership with Atari.

lone_liberal > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 00:01

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Sears closed their catalog business in 1993. If they had stuck with it for a couple of more years they would have been ideally positioned for internet sales and Amazon would just  be a book seller. Weird how these things work.

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 00:02

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There was an expression oft shouted to bad drivers back in the day:

“Where’d you get your license, Sears & Roebuck?”

Implying they had ordered their license by mail.

Before my time, but so I heard.

ranwhenparked > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 00:07

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Sears isn’t totally gone, yet, just nearly gone. They’ve still got 100ish full department stores in the US, plus 80 or so K-Marts. And about 490 Sears Hometown stores, 15 Sears Home Appliance Showrooms, and another 125 Sears Outlet stores, which are mostly franchises.

There's also another 100 or so Sears stores in Mexico

not for canada - australian in disguise > ranwhenparked 06/14/2020 at 00:27

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My Canadian-centric mind is showing. Although I highly doubt those 180 stores that are still left will last much longer, nor will the Mexican stores. I give them about a year. I would’ve given them 2 but then The Event happened.

ranwhenparked > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 00:44

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It was 400 last fall, so, yeah, they’re going down fast. The bankruptcy “rescue” was really just so they could have more time to do an orderly wind down.

The Mexican stores are apparently successful, so those will survive, and the franchises will probably continue for at least a few years beyond the death of the parent company 

ranwhenparked > lone_liberal 06/14/2020 at 01:09

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And they were partners in Prodigy, one of the earliest online services to support e-commerce back in the mid '80s. It's like they had all the components in place to dominate online retail in the 21st century, but either didn't connect it all together in the right way, or gave up on it and quit just a bit too soon. 

Gertman2000 > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: 06/14/2020 at 01:24

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Yes my mom would say that for SURE!!!

Gertman2000 > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 01:28

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WOW a great well written article!!! Thanks so much for posting and I had no idea about that ‘70's EV they made or what it was based on. That’s pretty cool stuff. Now I know that Sears had a big catalog business but I thought JC Penny was really the first one with that and they even had stores where you could go in and order and then go in and pick your items up when they came in. Really, it was Walmart that first turned everyone on their ear before Amazon by having everything in stock just waiting to be bought for instant gratification.

Also, if memory serves me right, you could actually buy a house in the Sears catalog for a short time, too!!

not for canada - australian in disguise > Gertman2000 06/14/2020 at 01:48

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Sears was founded and started their mail-order business in 1892, while J.C. Penney showed up in 1902 but unlike Sears was a brick-and-mortar business at the start, and only published their first catalogue in 1963, likely because Sears had recently entered the department store game in a big way and J.C. Penney wanted to reciprocate by entering their business.

Interestingly, Sears weren’t the only ones who sold houses by mail-order catalogue. Eaton’s did the exact same thing around the same time in the early 20th century in Canada. A large amount of Eaton’s houses still exist, mostly in Western Canada as the mail-order business was rather popular in rural areas, and Western Canada was very rural at the time. If catalogue houses never existed, I could very much see westward expansion in Canada happening at a much slower pace.

There were also quite a few mail-order catalogues that only sold homes and nothing else, such as Aladdin.

Rather fittingly, Eaton’s would be bought by Sears after going bust in the late 90s. The Eaton’s catalogue was essentially the Canadian equivalent (although Eaton’s published their first catalogue before Sears in 1884 ) of the Sears catalogue until Sears entered Canada as Simpsons-Sears in the 50s .

It’s really quite crazy how stores that made absolute bank off of catalogue sales never thought to adapt the format to the Internet. Eaton’s, Sears, and JCPenney could easily be some of the largest online retailers in their respective countries. Now all of them are dead or dying a painful, slow death.

not for canada - australian in disguise > ranwhenparked 06/14/2020 at 01:52

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Mexico is basically becoming a graveyard for dead retail brands. They’ve even still got Woolworth. 

barnie > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 03:22

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But do they have a soda counter like in my youth? Loved those co ke floats with cherry syrup ! Nickel hotdogs with slaw and mustard. Clean Formica curves and stools you could spin around on until ya got dizzy or the waitress blessed ya out. Mine was off Pack Square, downtown Asheville NC.

KnowsAboutCars > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 05:53

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Good read. I was familiar with the Allstate but not the two others.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 07:29

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Wow, that is an awesome article! That XHD-1 is some obscure stuff! I had no idea it even existed, let alone it was based on a FIAT! 0_o

shop-teacher > Gertman2000 06/14/2020 at 10:56

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They sold houses for decades actually. They included everything except for bricks, plaster, and mortar. They're usually found within a mile of a rail road, because the kit of parts would show up on a railcar, and you'd have 24 hours to unload the car. I actually love in a Seats Osborne built in 1925.

shop-teacher > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: 06/14/2020 at 12:59

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My mom used to say K-Mart.

Klaus Schmoll > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 15:33

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Great read. thanks!!!

Gertman2000 > not for canada - australian in disguise 06/14/2020 at 22:17

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WOW thanks so much for the additional info!!

Gertman2000 > shop-teacher 06/14/2020 at 22:18

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WOW that’s pretty cool and just 24hrs to unload everything, that’s crazy!!

shop-teacher > Gertman2000 06/14/2020 at 22:20

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Yep!