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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Lost Roadside Attraction: Before Cars and Coffee, There Was Zumbach's

Ralph Stein's The Great Cars, published in 1967, was almost as much a memoir of a life spent chasing classic cars as it was a depiction of the machines themselves.  Many of the cars he describes were encountered at Zumbach Motor Service in Manhattan. Zumbach's, as it was called by its fans, was more than a service and repair facility.  It was a kind of motoring shrine, and a meeting place where lovers of exotic machinery could meet to exchange technical information and racing lore. Seven decades or so before there was anything like "cars and coffee", there was Zumbach's.  In the decade preceding World War II, if you had an ailing Bugatti or Alfa Romeo or Duesenberg, and you were somewhere on the East Coast, you took it to Zumbach's.  By the early 1950s, Zumbach's fame had spread so far that actor Gary Cooper drove his Lagonda from Hollywood to New York once a year to the garage for tuning, and a collector from Michigan shipped his Talbot Lago there for expert attention.  Zumbach's built a famous racing car too...
This is Halley's Comet, a kind of early road racing hot rod based upon a modified Mercedes chassis for car collector McClure Halley.  The car was powered by an engine from the legendary Harry Miller, a high school dropout and intuitive engineer whose power plants ruled American tracks in the 1920s through  40s. Miller designed engines which inspired the Duesenberg brothers and also led to the Offenhauser engines which dominated the Indy 500 for decades.  In Halley's Comet, the engine is a Miller 151, a  twin-cam inline four with four valves per cylinder. The photo above, taken around 1935, shows Zumbach's team lined up behind their handiwork. The photo below shows the completed car as it competed at the Vanderbilt Cup Races in 1936. Today Halley's Comet is restored, and has hit the concours circuit...
Swiss mechanic Werner Maeder had joined Zumbach's in 1925, and took over the business in 1947 after the death of founder Charles Zumbach. Like Harry Miller, he was of the intuitive school of engineering and mechanics. In the photo below, he listens attentively to the idling straight eight of a Bugatti Type 57.
By summer of 1951, when the picture below was taken at Zumbach's for The Saturday Evening Post, phrases like "classic car" and "sports car" had begun to seep into American English.  GIs stationed in Britain had encountered small, nippy roadsters like MG's TC, and that car was credited after the war with making sports cars (and amateur road racing) affordable Stateside. Late in 1949 the Jaguar XK120* appeared, and by the early 50s it transformed American road racing as well as the U.S. market for imported cars, making performance previously attainable only in cars costing $12,000 (a fortune in 1950) available for the price of a Cadillac.  With its advanced twin overhead cam inline six and swoopy mix of modern and traditional lines, it formed a link to prewar classics like the Lagonda parked behind it, and the Bugatti lurking in the garage entry...
…and to cars like the Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 B, shown below with Maeder at the wheel and owner McClure Halley observing a road test in Central Park.  Today these cars would be welcome in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, but in 1951 some of them were serving double duty as weekend racers and grocery haulers.
While catering to wealthy collectors and racers, Maeder expanded the business to include maintenance and repair of everyday cars like Buicks, Hudsons and Studebakers, and advocated for careful and meticulous maintenance over the growing postwar trend of trading in cars every three years. When interviewed for the article in the Post, he was still driving the only car he'd ever bought new, a 1936 Buick.  In the photo below, he consults with the owner of a Singer*, another of the popular-priced British roadsters then entering the U.S. market, which would soon see Triumph TRs and Austin Healeys as well.
At the other end of the marketplace from Maeder's mainstream clientele, but just down the street (in fact, right next door), Luigi Chinetti would soon be seeking customers as the first U.S. distributor for something called the Ferrari. In 1951, not too many Americans knew about the car that Chinetti had piloted to victory in the 1949 Le Mans 24 Hours.  But the kind of people who cared about this achievement, and could possibly afford the eye-watering price tags on Chinetti's little red cars, were often the men and women who hung out at Zumbach's garage...

*Footnotes:  For more on the design and impact of the XK120, see "Game Changer" in these posts for 7/16/17. The Singer and its close relative, the HRG Twin Cam, are reviewed in the "Forgotten Classic" post for 3/28/18.

Photo Credits:

Top:  Zumbach Motor Service, photographer unknown
2nd:  vanderbiltcupraces.com
3rd thru 6th from top:  Hans Knopf for The Saturday Evening Post 
7th:  The Henry Ford collection 

16 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. A job well done! This is a beautiful piece. Trust me, the sky is your limit...Aluminium Scaffolding Manufacturer

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    1. Hey, thanks for the kind words. Just stumbled onto another great car collection, and will have some notes and photos soon.

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  3. Re reading Ralph Stein. This is the most information I have seen about the legendary Zumbachs. Thanks!




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  4. I bought a brand new Saab 900 Turbo from Zumbach in 1984. Fabulous car. The only thing I did wrong was park it in downtown Detroit in 1988 where the hood was scratched with the message “Head back east, you commie bastard.” Well, it was an import with plates saying “Zumbach New York City”!

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  5. Hi Vaughan; if we had an award for Comment of the Year, yours would win…actually, it would be in the running to win for the past 5 years of comments. My Saab was a '70 model 99 with the Bosch fuel injection; grumpy electronics but comfy seats, and a good place to be if you're going to get hit by a Checker cab...

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  6. I enjoyed reading the article on Zumbach's. I am currently writing a book on my father, Robert S. Grier (Bob) who was a leading sports car driver, one of the founders of Bridgehampton, president of MSCA in the late 40s and 50s. As a small child in the 30s I hung out with my father on various Saturday trips to Zumbach's. He was also a photographer as a hobby so I have a lot of material. I would appreciate any information that you could share and I in turn can do the same. How can I reach out to you directly?
    Thank you, Lucy.

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  7. Glad you enjoyed this essay, Lucy. Your book project sounds fascinating... I can be reached at my business e-mail address: robert@poeschlarchitecture.com.

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  8. Just saw your article, my Grandpa Maeder was one of a kind. I remember driving many of the cars he had. Bugatti, Mercedes and a rolls. Also spent summer cleaning the silver in these beauties. Nice memories, thank you. Lawrence Werner Meder

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  9. Hi Lawrence—Thanks for having a look at this. Those must be wonderful memories; it seems like such a different world now.

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  10. I dont know who is saying they are the grandchild of Werner Maeder Sr but im Susan Schmitt and I am the grand daughter and daughter of Werner G Maeder Jr. I remeber these pictures in our shop. They are great memories.

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    1. Lawrence Meder, son of Frederick Meder and Elaine Maedar

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  11. I am the proud owner of an original Zumbach NYC license plate frame which a vintage car buff and dealer old friend of mine Bobby(now deceased) took off his 1984 BMW 5 series sedan and gave me as a souvenir. It is one of my most prized possessions. Couldn’t figure out how to post properly so my email is 2tonynyc@gmail.com.
    P.S. great article! I’m guessing Bobby was one of the guys hanging out at Zumbach.

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  12. Thanks for having a look. We can email notices of new posts, especially related ones.

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  13. Zumbach's also took care of Guy Lombardo's hydroplane racer Tempo.

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  14. Didn't know about Guy Lombardo's hydroplane racer, but at least I know about his musical career. Thanks for having a look.

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