It featured a highly streamlined steel body with headlights and windshield posts seamlessly blended in. So, Frank Brogan crafted a sleek, two-passenger runabout he called the Brogan Doodlebug. And in 1944, his wife asked him to design a small car to make shopping tasks easier for women whose husbands took their primary vehicles to work.

Later, he designed a motor scooter for his daughter. But he also created the lightweight Brogan Foldable Monoplane that could be towed from the airport to the owner’s home for garage storage. His B & B Specialty Company at Rossmoyne, Ohio, primarily manufactured a variety of screws, fasteners, and other machine products. However, as the supply of dependable used cars dried up during World War II, pilot Frank Brogan believed attitudes would change. But the public preferred large used cars over tiny small ones. After Ford stopped producing the Model T in 1927, upstarts like Martin, Littlemac, American Austin, and Bantamattempted to fill the economy car void.

In 1912, a cyclecar craze began in Europe and quickly spread to the United States, where more than 200 manufacturers sprouted and shriveled within 18 months. Minimal motoring” – small, no-frills, basic transportation – has never satisfied the American automobilist. Sleek 1946 Brogan Doodlebug looked like an escapee from an amusement park.

Doodlebug definition