This quaint brass and steel key from a past QBO estate sale hides a handy surprise – a tiny tool set for tuning up your Chevy! The tools include a 2” ruler, a simplified custom carburetor float gauge, an Electrolock nut wrench, Electrolock retainer nut wrench, and a 4-bladed feeler gauge set to measure crucial clearances between engine parts: the motor hot exhaust valve (.008), motor hot intake valve (.006), spark plugs (.024) and breaker points (.018). All that in just 3″!
Produced for Chevrolet by the Kent Moore Company of Detroit, Michigan, it is emblazoned with the Chevy logo and a punny motto, “The Key to Chevrolet Performance”. To not compete with the client, “Kent Moore, Det.” is just stamped discreetly inside on a few tools. This precision set could easily fit in your pocket or Chevy glovebox and might have been a dealer giveaway, several versions were made during the 1930s. Kent Moore, (both the man and the company he founded) had worked for Ford at the inception of the automobile business, but after a falling out, switched to competitor General Motors (maker of Buick, GMC, Cadillac and Chevrolet).
Like the Kent Moore company, Chevrolet was named after its founders, Swiss-born race car driver Arthur Chevrolet, and his brother, Swiss-born race car driver and automotive engineer Louis Chevrolet. They started the company in 1911 along with a third founder unnamed in the company’s title, William C. Durant, an investor and early industrialist. Initially opposed to automobiles, once convinced Durant became overly ambitious, voraciously consolidating 23 early car and car part manufacturers in 1908 under the General Motors Holding Company. But he had expanded GM so explosively that the company ran short of cash and in 1910 the board kicked Durant out. The dashing Chevrolet brothers and their well-designed cars represented a toehold back into the automobile business and by 1916, Durant’s investment in them paid off – he used the profits from Chevrolet’s brisk sales to seize control of General Motors again.
Although they look adorably un-aerodynamic and old-fashioned now, in the 1930s the Chevy cars and trucks serviced by this special key were the height of modernism, luxury and fashion. As the introduction of a completely new and speculative technology, the early car business was fraught with down and dirty drama – shaky partnerships, unwise mergers, forced acquisitions, miscalculations, fraud, worker abuse, bankruptcies and betrayals.
Which makes the Kent Moore company all that more remarkable. Although Kent Moore the man left decades ago, the business still has an exemplary reputation producing specialized precision mechanics’ tools. It is still based in the U.S.; cheap knock-offs can’t compete. Many CEOs claim “we’re family” but when employees say it decades after leaving, it’s real. Founded in Jackson, MI, the small manufacturer employed around 200 engineers, blue print artists, machinists, assembly-line workers, managers, product, inventory and cost-control supervisors, sales and office staff, accountants and janitors. When that plant closed in the ’90s with the company moving to several different locations, scattered employees kept in touch. They now gather online joking about banjos at Christmas parties, bowling, company basketball and softball games and that time one guy viewed a solar eclipse through a welding helmet. Former supervisors and workers speak of each other fondly. And because some started as long ago as the 1920s, they now also post obituaries and attend memorials. And they carry on; as of today, at least one family has had three generations working at Kent Moore, a tribute to its culture.
Tuesday Treasures was started by our staff member, Jeanne Lusignan. Each week she will be featuring items that have been found at our estate sales. If you would like to submit a treasure for Jeanne to feature in a future installment of “Tuesday’s Treasures”, please follow the button below and send us an email! Please attach a few photos of your treasure in a beautiful setting as well as any details you have about your item such as manufacturer, use, age, region of origin. If you don’t know about the piece, that’s okay! We still might be able to research it for you! Don’t forget to tell us what makes this item such a treasure to you!