Powell Manufacturing Company
| Founded | 1926 |
|---|---|
| Defunct | April 1979 |
Coordinates: 33°55′07″N 118°13′21″W / 33.9185166°N 118.2225673°W
Powell Manufacturing Company (PMC) was a company based in southern California, widely known for its line of motor scooters that peaked in popularity in the late 1940s. From September 1954 to March 1957, Powell manufactured "Sport Wagon" pickup trucks and station wagons. In the 1960s and 1970s, they manufactured the "Powell Challenger" trail bikes.
The company originally began operations in 1926, and manufactured thousand of radios, then moving on to build approximately 1,200 pickup trucks, 300 station wagons, and three motor homes, and tens of thousands of scooters and trail bikes. The manufacturing address was listed as 2914 North Alameda Street in Compton, California, which was two miles south of the General Motors South Gate Assembly factory, and they had a showroom listed at 12700 S. Western Avenue.
The Powell Brothers—Hayward and Channing Powell—started manufacturing radios in the mid-1920s, immediately after they graduated from Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles in 1924. Their first company, Winner Radio, produced expensive radios which did not sell well and then inexpensive radios which did. During 1925, Hayward Powell developed appendicitis, and in early 1926 had an appendectomy. During Hayward's recovery, the brothers took a five-month cross-country trip. When they returned to Los Angeles, they started Powell Manufacturing Company in 1926 to make battery eliminators, soon also making box-style table radios typical of the 1920s. By 1930 they were part of the reputation of Los Angeles as the "midget capitol of the world", making what are now referred to as cathedral-style table radios (midget in comparison to earlier floor-standing consoles and large-box table radios). In 1931 they were also selling the even-smaller "pee-wee" cathedral-style table radios which had become popular. Before they quit the radio business in 1932, they produced an innovative radio just nine inches square and thirty-four inches high, perhaps the forerunner of the chair-side style radios.
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