1954 Oldsmobile F-88 (XP-20 show car)

1954 Oldsmobile F-88 (from the collection of the author)

1954 Oldsmobile F-88 (from the collection of the author)

Back in 1991, I was a recent transplant to Arizona and took my camera to the Barrett-Jackson auction. This was back when Barrett-Jackson only had one auction a year and most of the other auction companies associated with Arizona's auction week had not yet arrived on the scene.  The car pictured here fascinated me. I didn't know at the time, but it turned out to be one of four XP-20 cars produced back in 1953/54 - now call the Oldsmobile F-88. I car didn't attract much attention in 1991 and I remember it selling for a very reasonable price (under $200k). 

The reason for this appress to be that the car has always been in question. The project was lead by Harley Earl, with Bill Mitchell and Zora Arkus-Duntov involved. Earl is said to have kept one of the cars for himself - later updated as a second generation F-88 (with a different front and rear clip). Two other cars are assumed distroyed.  This car (styling order #2265) was assembled from a shipment of parts purchased by E.L. Cord soon after the 1954 show season. Yup, the same E.L. Cord of Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg fame. The question still debated by historians is whether this car is the 1954 Motorama show car - disassembled and shipped with all remaining parts for the XP-20 project to E.L. Cord. Or, whether this car is simply built from extra parts remaining after the XP-20 project was completed. A good argument can be made for both scenarios and I don't believe anyone really knows the truth at this point.

Regardless, it's quite curious that Cord would purchase the crate of parts and that GM would allow it sold to him. It's unclear to me the chain of ownership leading up to the 1991 sale, however Bruce Lustman (a Colorado collector) seems to have gotten a great deal in retrospect. The car was shown by Lustman and consigned to Don Williams at the Blackhawk. Williams is said to have sold the car to Gordon Apker. Michael Lamb, an automotive writer, wrote a piece on the car the year before it went back to the Barrett-Jackson auction. In January 2005, the car sold to a new owner, John Hendricks of the Gateway Colorado Automobile Museum, for $3,240,000.  

The car looks fantastic and it would interesting to see if that price could be repeated today.

The Mercer Automobile Company's Model 30 - the car that started it all.

1910 Mercer Model 30 5-Passenger Touring (from the collection of the author)

1910 Mercer Model 30 Speedster (from the collection of the author)

I was fortunate to have lived for a time up the road from Fred Hoch's Schaeffer & Long restorations shop. A long standing institution in southern New Jersey, the shop has a reputation for its work on brass-era cars - particularly cars from the storied Mercer Automobile Company. I met Fred at a local car show in Haddonfield, NJ. I walked up to him and introduced myself, we talked briefly and he invited me down to see his shop. Always gracious and deeply passionate about Mercers, I had the privilege of visiting with Fred a handful of times over my 3-years living in New Jersey. Fred is known for acquiring the rights to the name "Mercer Automobile Company", manufactured a few miles north in Mercer County, and owning a number of the marque as well. 

The Mercer story starts with the Roebling family, specifically Washington Roebling II, and his friend William Walter. The Roeblings were New Jersey royalty after their considerable roll in building the Brooklyn Bridge. The family was involved in many manufacturing enterprises and had considerable wealth. Both Washington Roebling II and the son's of John A. Roebling (Ferdinand Roebling), were interested in automobiles and looked to enter the industry. William Walter on the other hand was an early entry in to the business, manufacturing a car under his own name. The Walter Automobile Company exhibited their high-quality cars at the 1904 Madison Square Garden Show. Never produced in hi-volume, The Horseless Age of May 20, 1907 reports that Walter moved into a new factory in Trenton, NJ to allow for greater production capacity. It is said that it was the Roeblings who enticed Walter to move his operation to Trenton where the Roeblings' manufacturing empire was located. Interestingly, at about the same time The Horseless Age reports that the John A. Roebling Company had entered into a  contract W. H. Sharp to manufacture the car which Sharp constructed and drove in the recent Long Island sweepstakes races. In addition, it's also noted that Washington A. Roebling II planned to build ten four cylinder cars after the design of M. Etienne Planchard, a French engineer. The cars were named Roebling-Planchard and a small number were produced. William Walter gets into financial trouble around 1908 / 1909 - in fact, The Cycle and Automotive Trade Journal of Feb 1,1909 states that The Walter Automobile Co. of Trenton, NJ exhibited the 1909 Roebling-Planche cars at the Madison Square Garden Show. However by late 1909, the Roebling's have purchased the assets of the Walter Automobile Company, and quickly reorganize the company, designing a new line of cars to be named Mercer. 

The new Mercer Automobile Company offerings are introduced in 1910. The model 30 (their first car) uses 4-cylinder engines source from Beaver. Four body styles are offered: a limousine, a five passenger touring, a baby tonneau, and a two passenger runabout called the speedster. Motor Age of Jan 6, 1910 noted that Mercer was a new comer that year in their article outlining the  ALAM licensed cars for 1910.

Today, Model 30 Mercers (only manufactured in that first year of 1910) are quite rare and the cars show about are both 1910 Mercer model 30 car owned/restored by Fed Hoch. The one being a five passenger touring - I believe it's the only know surviver of its kind. The car is a 1910 Mercer model 30 speedster which Fred showed at Hershey.

Of course, everything would change in 1911 with the introduction of the model 35, Finlay R. Porter's masterpiece. 

The Automobile, May 27, 1909

The Horseless Age, December 15, 1909

The Daniels Motor Company and their Model D-19

1921 Daniels Eight Submarine Speedster (from the collection of the author)

The story of George Daniels (1877-1954) is a fascinating tale and the car that bears his name is a wonderful testament to his automotive legacy. George was educated as a lawyer, but left to head the Buick Motor Car Co.'s distribution in eastern Pennsylvania. According to coachbuilt.com, William Durant, Buick's owner at the time, took a liking to Daniels and the two remained lifelong friends. George left GM to start his own automobile company around 1915. Originally planned to be manufactured in Pontiac, MI, Daniels ended up finding financial backers in PA and Reading (3rd Street and Lebanon Vally R.R.) was chosen as the manufacturing location. The early cars featured a Herchell-Spillman supplied V-8. The company used bodies initially supplied by the Keystone Vehicle Co., a firm that was eventually taken over by the Daniels Motor Co. (these buildings appear to still exist).

In 1920, Daniels Motor Company introduced it's own V-8 in the model D. Although over seven body styles were offered, the most notable was the Submarine Speedster, of which 100 examples were constructed between 1920 and 1922.

The car pictured here (taken at Hershey a few years ago) is the only known surviving Submarine Speedster (this is a 1921 model D-19). Powered by Daniel's 464 cubic-inch V-8, the engine is said to produce 90 hp. There are a handful of Daniels cars that survive, and Daniels was always a small scale manufacturer - annual production was listed at 750 cars in 1922. Forced into bankruptcy in January 1923, when George's largest shareholder liquidated his stock, a year later the assets of the company were sold to Philadelphia-based Levene Motors Co. who specialized in buying out bankrupt manufacturers to acquire their replacement parts business. The January 17, 1924 issue of The Automobile (Automotive Industries) reporting: "The Levene Motor Co. of this city has bought at receivers' sale the entire plant of the Daniels Motor Co. of Reading, Pa., for $90,000, subject to a $50,000 mortgage."

It is said that Durant learned of Daniels embarrassment and offered him a job at Locomobile, appointing him general manager then later vice-president. 

Daniels factory and test car

1930 Rolls-Royce PII (chassis 25 EX)

Rolls-Royce (chassis 25 EX) taken at the Frank Cooke Estate Sale (from the collection of the author)

I was fortunate to have meet and known Frank Cooke in his later years. As I've written previously, I grew up not far from North Brookfield, MA, and when Dad purchased his first Rolls-Royce, it was from Frank. Frank was a fascinating character; a melding of engineering intuition and Yankee spirit. He became quite active in the RROC and owned many cars. Favoring Grout steam cars and Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts. 

One the most interesting of his cars was the 1930 Phantom II (chassis 25 EX) with very unique Whittingham & Mitchel coachwork. The car was the seventh PII chassis built and used by the factory as a test chassis (as were a hand-full of early PII chassis). According to Bonhams (who has sold this car at least twice since Frank's death), the car was shipped to America and compared with the Springfield factory's Phantom I's being produced at the time (October of 1930). The car was returned to England and by 1933 it's use as a test car was finished. The chassis was restored to PII specification and sold, being re-bodied by Whittingham & Mitchel at the direction of the new owner - J Eskdale of Fishburn, USA and London. It is likely that Eskdale brought the car to the US and by the late 1940's it is in the hands of William Kramer of New York. Roland Blackway of Vermont purchased the car in the early 1950s and Frank Cooke purchased it from Blackway's estate in 1971. The Bonhams auction house would sell the car, along with much of the Cooke Estate, in 2006. 

Whittingham & Mitchel Ltd. start life in 1929 in Putney and bodied a small number of Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars, though are better known for there work with Vauxhall.

I consider this car to be an under-valued treasure. Now overseas, it will be interesting to see if it's restored or returns to the United States.

25 EX in New York (with William Kramer at the wheel?) (photo credit: Puleo / theoldmotor.com)

1929 Mercedes-Benz Nurburg Fire Chief Car

1929 Mercedes-Benz Nurburg 460 Mobile Fire Command Vehicle (form the collection of the author)

I don't usually write about trucks, but this vehicle struck me as something unusual when I spotted it in a friend's garage. Mercedes-Benz introduced the Nurburg 460 (W08) in the autumn of 1928. The first eight cylinder passenger car chassis, the design was the work of the legendary Ferdinand Porsche.

It seems that Daimler-Benz received a large order for fire fighting equipment in 1929. Nine of these vehicles, bound for Lisbon, Portugal, were built on the Nurburg 460 platform. Each fire command vehicle was fitted with a 92 gallon water tank, 328 feet of hose, and a pump delivering 158 gallons per minute. 

Fascinating vehicle - I wonder how it drives?

Photo credit: mercedes-benz-blog.blogspot.com

The Amazing 1901 Columbia Gasoline Runabout

The lone surviving Columbia Mark VIII gasoline runabout (from the collection of the author)

The car pictured here is the only known surviving Columbia Mark VIII gasoline runabout (circa 1901). This car represents the very first automobile to use a front-mounted, gasoline engine driven through a multi-speed transmission with left-hand "wheeled" steering. In other words, this is the car that set the standard still seen today in most automobiles here in the United States.

This story starts with Hiram Percy Maxim (1869-1936) who was one of those brilliant and curious minds that came along in a time of great industrial expansion here in America. H.P. Maxim was the son of the inventor of the Maxim machine gun (Hiram Steven Maxim) and the nephew of Hudson Maxim, inventor of explosives and ballistic propellents. 

H.P. graduated from MIT and went to work close by in Lynn, MA for the American Projectile Company. It was here, while experimenting with things that exploded, that he is said to have developed his first internal combustion engine (it is written that Maxim was unaware of the work done by Damlier and Benz at the time). In 1894, he would place one of his engines in a three wheeled bicycle and it is this device that would spark the fascination of Col. Albert Pope - one of the nations largest bicycle manufactures. The story goes that Pope hired Maxim on the spot and created a "motor carriage" department at his factory in Hartford, CT, putting Maxim in charge. Maxim would design his first prototype vehicle for Pope's Columbia brand in 1896 - an electric phaeton. They missed the the Chicago Tribune race (1896), but would release their first products to the market in 1897 (the Mark III electric phaeton) and prove the merits of their automobiles by winning the first close-track race in New Haven, CT in 1899. 

The Columbia brand of electric vehicles would become one of the largest manufacturers of automobiles in America prior to 1900. Maxim would continue to improve upon his creations introducing no less than 7 different models in a three year window. Maxim developed his first gasoline prototype for Columbia in 1898 with a electromechanical transmission designed by J.B. Entz (later used in the Owen Magnetic). 1899 saw the release of the Mark VIII gasoline runabout. Columbia's Motor Carriage Company would merge with New York's Electric Vehicle Company in 1900 (Pope would sell out to EVC soon after). Maxim stayed on with EVC and continued to design new models. 

The Columbia Mark VIII gasoline runabout would be shown at the very first Philadelphia Automobile Show in February of 1901. Later the same year, 3 Columbia Mark VIII's were entered in the New York City to Buffalo endurance run (one car being entered by Jacob Astor). The early history of the car seen here is unknown to me, however it ended up spending many years in Henry Austin Clark's Long Island Auto Museum. The car now resides in a fantastic private collection in New England. 

As for Hiram Percy Maxim, he would go on to invent the first "silencer" for firearms after experiments on "silencing" internal combustion engines (we now call these mufflers). He also founded an amateur radio league (ARRL) and the Amateur Cinema League in New York.

The Automobile Review, April 1901

The Columbia Mark VIII when in the collection of the Long Island Auto Museum

Scientific American, March 9,1901

The Martin Wasp

The Halls in the Bill Gregg built Martin Wasp (from the collection of the author)

The photo seen here was taken by Dad in 1953 climbing the hill to the Princeton (MA) meet. The story of Karl H. Martin - the car's namesake - is wonderfully told here: http://www.coachbuilt.com/des/m/martin/martin.htm.

Although two restorations (or recreations, depending on your view) of the Martin Wasp cars were created, the car pictured here is believed to be the car built from original parts purchased from Karl Martin in 1947 by Bill Gregg.  Gregg would sell the finished car to Mrs. Glade Hall of Florence, MA in 1949. I believe it is the Hall family seen in this picture, diving the car.

The story, as recounted here from Coachbuilt.com, starts with Karl's father Dr. Truman Martin of Buffalo, NY. Dr. Martin is said to be one of the earliest purchasers of an automobile in Buffalo (a Columbia Electric) and the first person in the United State to have purchased automobile insurance (from a Travelers Insurance Company agent in Hartford, CT). Dr. Martin invested in many automobile related enterprises and encouraged his son Karl to join the industry. After passing on Yale and investing in the booming oil business, Karl moved to New York City and became an independent automobile designer (designing bodies for wealthy New York clients and automobile showrooms). Most of his work ended up on European chassis, though no known examples of his Manhattan coachwork are though to survive. 

Karl would relocate to Chicago, serve in WWI, and end up designing the Roamer line between 1916 and 1918. Karl eventually got the idea of starting his own automobile company and moved to Bennington, VT where he brought in two local investors to fund the enterprise. The prototype Wasp was ready in time for the 1920 New York Automobile Show and an estimated 11 four-cylinder cars and 3 six-cylinder cars are thought to have been built between 1919 and 1925. The Martin-Wasp Corporation was dissolved in 1932 and reorganized as the Martin Shops which manufacturing cast metal and wood products into the 1940s. Karl H. Martin kept all of the leftover parts used in the manufacture of the Wasp and it was from this stock that Bill Gregg built the car seen here.