St. Cloud, MN was home to two different car companies over the years, the oldest one being PAN, the newest one being the subject of this thread. Can you name it?

Hints:

Founded on the bankrupt wreckage of a previous Minnesota car company.

Came in red, orange and yellow.

Two seater.

Sounds like a truck.... or a tractor.

Sounds like a truck.... or a tractor.

Way other end of the spectrum. These were built for mileage.

Wild guess... Indian motorcycles?

EDIT: Oh wait, you did say car companies...

Edited March 5, 201213 yr by GMTruckGuy74

Hmmm.....the orange and 'mileage' hint makes me think of that strange trapazoid shaped electric city car from the late '70s, don't know the company name or where it was built, though...

Edit: it was the Citicar I was thinking of, but apparently those were built in Florida...

Edited March 5, 201213 yr by Cubical-aka-Moltar

This one has me stumped even with the hints and using Bing,

All I know about St Cloud is that St Cloud State U is there, where a buddy of mine in Colorado went to school...he was always talking about abelskivers and the Abelskiver Days festival in his hometown of Tyler, Mn.

Me thinking, are you talking about e-ride?

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/07/27/ecar/

http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=e-ride+of+minnisota&d=4591479443030724&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=f31a780,ff2b1be0

Appears their web site has been suspended.

Another hint: The bankrupt company was Freeway. H.M. Vehicles.

Another hint: The bankrupt company was Freeway. H.M. Vehicles.

Ahhh...I remember that name from a Road & Track article from probably 30 years ago or more..

It had a 16hp Techumseh engine and was built between 1983 and 1986.

The answer is Minikin. It was made 1983-1986 on the chassis of the old Freeway. The only one I know to exist is in Wilmar and I'm going to try to get a better picture of it when the museum opens in May.