| Crosley cars were another product from Powel Crosley, who became a millionaire selling radios in the twenties and refrigerators in the thirties. To provide his radio buyers with programming, he bought WLW on Cincinnati and somehow finagled permission to broadcast at 500,000 watts. People in southern Ohio could hear WLW in their glasses, on their fillings, and on barbed wire fences. Of course the station broadcast the games of the Cincinnati Redlegs, which Crosley owned. Crosley introduced his minicar in 1939. It weighed in at 925 pounds. A couple thousand Crosleys were produced before Pearl Harbor, and production of the little cars (a foot shorter than a VW Beetle) continued after the war. For a couple of years sales were good, and introduction of the Hotshot sports car in 1949 helped, but by 1952 the car business was losing money and Crosley threw in the towel. |
