Founded in 1931 by Walter C. Marmon and Arthur W. Herrington, the company was the successor to the Marmon Motor Car Company, a maker of high quality, costly automobiles from 1902 to 1933. By the early 1930s, the U.S. economy had taken a severe downturn, and with the onset of the Great Depression, the market for prestigious luxury cars mostly collapsed. To keep his business going, Marmon joined forces with an ex-military engineer in the person of Arthur Herrington in 1931, with a new idea to focus on building all-wheel-drive trucks. And so the company became Marmon-Herrington, initially as the truck production division of the Marmon Motor Car Company, developing military trucks.