Stearns-Knight

Stearns-Knight was an American maker of luxury cars in Cleveland, Ohio, that built vehicles from 1911 until 1929. It began as B. Stearns and Company, later the F. B. Stearns Company, founded by Frank Ballou Stearns, and sold cars under the Stearns name from 1900 to 1911. In 1911 it became the first American automobile maker to fit the Knight sleeve valve engine, and the cars with that engine carried the Stearns-Knight brand name; by 1917 it also offered a V8, one of the first companies to do so. Stearns sold the firm to J. N. Willys in 1925, and Willys ran Stearns-Knight as a non-integrated affiliate of Willys-Overland until the company was liquidated in 1929. Production ended on December 20, 1929.