The company diversified into the automobile business in 1906, producing French Berliet designs under license. Production was located at ALCO's Rhode Island Locomotive Works in Providence, Rhode Island. Two years later, the Berliet license was abandoned, and the company began to produce its own designs instead. Alco cars won the Vanderbilt Cup in both 1909 and 1910 and also competed in the Indianapolis 500 in 1911, but they had less success in sales, abandoning automobile manufacture in 1913. The Alco automobile story is chiefly notable for starting the automobile career of Walter P. Chrysler, the plant manager, who left for Buick in 1911 and subsequently founded the Chrysler automobile giant which went bankrupt in 2009.