The story
During World War II, Woodrow Wilson Skirvin headed to Detroit, Michigan, to land a job at a war plant. He found his opportunity at a tool & die company. In 1944, he moved back to Indianapolis and started engineering aircraft parts in his garage. Due to demand, He quickly outgrew several shops. With Allison Engine Company and General Motors being his prime customers, two different engines using Skirvin parts powered airplanes successively setting new world air speed records. The first was the United States Air Force Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, which achieved 623.8 MPH on June 9, 1947. The second was a Navy D-558 Douglas Skystreak, which achieved 650.6 MPH on Aug 25th, 1947.
In 1951 with a government loan of $100,000 W.W. Skirvin built the 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m2) building where the Cycle-Scoot was designed and manufactured.
From Wikipedia’s article on Cycle-Scoot, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3