September 2024
The southern Ontario city of Barrie has never been known as an automobile manufacturing city, unlike Detroit or Oshawa, but it was in Barrie that the short-lived Bell Motor Cars Company located on of their assembly plants.
Bell Motor Cars Company was an automobile company, based in York, Pennsylvania, that operated from 1915-1922. Bell was actually not a manufacturer, but rather an assembler, using components manufactured by other companies.
In 1915, the Barrie Carriage Company, a local manufacturer of carriages, decided to get into the automotive industry, becoming the licensed Canadian assembler of Bell cars. Barrie Carriage Company had been established in 1904 by local businessman Simon Dyment, operating out of a three-storey carriage works at John and Ellen Streets.
Their early success was later hindered by the fact that the company was under-capitalized and their factory, while successfully producing and selling an increasing number of their buggies, they could not fulfill customer demand. The hope by assembling the Bell automobile, it would provide extra revenue to upgrade their factory, but this only added to the company’s problems.
While the Barrie Carriage Company had a contract for 300 vehicles, by 1918 it was clear that the company was in trouble. By the time the company ceased operations in April 1920, between 29 and 40 Bell automobiles were assembled at the Barrie factory.
Today, nothing remains of the Barrie Carriage Company’s carriage works, which was demolished long ago.
Of the few Bell automobiles assembled at the Barrie Carriage Works, the Barrie Bell, #29 off the Barrie assembly line, is one of two Bell automobiles that are known to remain today and the only one assembled in Barrie known to remain.
When Innisfil Town Councilor, and later Mayor, Brian Jackson discovered the Barrie Bell in the 1990s, the five-passenger touring car was in need of a complete restoration after around eight decades of existence.
After a ten-year process, the volunteer Barrie Bell Restoration Committee were able to present the restored Barrie Bell to the city. Jackson and fellow committee member Murray Irwin, who’s grandfather had once owned the car, traveled across southern Ontario and America to gather authentic replacement parts. Making the search somewhat easier was the fact that Bell Motor Car Company didn’t manufacture their own parts. Instead, the company bought parts from various automobile manufacturers, so finding suitable replacement parts usually meant finding parts produced for other cars from the same time period.
For many years, the car was on display at the Simcoe County Museum, but has since been moved to the main foyer of the Peggy Hill Team Community Centre in the Holly neighbourhood of Barrie.
Sources: Bell Motor Car Company – Wikipedia, Barrie Bell a labour of love for group who restored locally built, and rare, automobile – Barrie News (barrietoday.com), THEN AND NOW: Owen St. home once owned by man behind Barrie Carriage Co. – Barrie News (barrietoday.com).
