Pierce-Arrow: From Gilded Cage to Silver Arrow

You could say that the saga of the Pierce-Arrow began with a gilded cage and ended with an aluminum travel trailer.  The company was founded in Buffalo, New York in 1865 and in 1872 Geroge N. Pierce bought out his partners.  By 1896 the eponymously named firm had made its first bicycle.  Pierce offered a steam-powered automobile, a failure, in 1900, and a two-cylinder gasoline-powered car in 1903. That proved more successful, and Pierce changed the company name to Pierce-Arrow in 1908.  One of the first official cars at the White House was a Pierce-Arrow, and the company produced about 500 four-cylinder motorcycles between 1909 and 1914. In that year which coincided with the onset of World War 1, Pierce introduced its signature headlights integrated into the fender tops.  Most cars had the lights posted between the fender and the radiator.  The effect of Pierce's lighting scheme was to illuminate a wider swath of the road, and also to signal the width of the approaching car.  In the case of a Pierce-Arrow, it was a large and expensive one.  The model shown below is from 1915.

The 1930 Model B Roadster below shows how the trademark headlights evolved to fit the styling themes of the late Twenties and early 30s.  Studebaker bought Pierce-Arrow in 1928, and the combine was for a time the fourth largest car in the country.  In 1929, nearly 8,500 Pierce-Arrows were sold.  This was an achievement, considering their prices started around $2,500, about six times the price of cheapest Ford Model A.  The sales boom was brief, however, and sales steadily decreased after the Wall Street Crash in October 1929... 

While sales were sinking, Pierce-Arrow maintained its high standards of engineering and craftsmanship, shown in details like the graceful archer hood ornament...

Studebaker discontinued the 6-cylinder "entry-level" Pierce-Arrows, emphasizing inline eights. Pierce kept its own engineering department, and in 1932 the company introduced a new V12 engine in two sizes, 398 and 429 cubic inches.  The 398 would be dropped in '33, and engine size increased to 462 cubic inches in 1934.  Pierce management was betting on most affluent car buyers to revive their business.  In 1932, the company sold 2,692 cars.  By 1934, Pierce was offering the convertible coupe shown below as the Model 840 inline eight, and as the V12-powered 1240.  

It's startling to realize that the car shown below was built a year earlier than the one pictured above.  The Silver Arrow show cars were conceived in the depths of the Great Depression by designer Phil Wright to attract attention to the company's other products at auto shows and in showrooms...

The tiny V-shaped rear window echoed the V-shaped plan of the windshield, and both were novelties in 1933.  So was the full width cabin with front doors flush with fender sides and headlights integrated into the fenders.  Though Pierce promoted the car with a "Suddenly it's 1940" theme, most of these features wouldn't arrive on mass-produced cars until the late Forties... 

Mass-produced was one thing the Silver Arrow was not. Pierce produced Phil Wright's ground-breaking design in a crash program for the 1933 New York Auto Show, where it was a sensation. The car was displayed at the House of Tomorrow at Chicago's Century of Progress* in 1933 and 34, but only 5 of the cars went to customers at $10,000 apiece.  Studebaker, which had built the Silver Arrow bodies, went bankrupt in 1933, and that year the two firms divorced and were reorganized. 

All five Silver Arrow show cars were powered by Pierce's V12, which featured hydraulic valve lifters.  The cars also featured power brakes.  One spare tire was lodged behind a panel in each front fender.  Three of these cars have survived...

Rescued by banks in its home city of Buffalo, Pierce-Arrow Motor Cars attempted to salvage its future by adapting the styling themes of the SIlver Arrow show cars to a streamlined, but less radical flagship, also (confusingly) called the Silver Arrow.  This was offered with inline 8 and V12 engine options in 1934 and 1935.  The example featured in the ad below is a 1934 model, denoted by the four vent doors on the hood's flanks.  The seaplane in the ad helps underline the streamlined, Art Deco theme of this car, which for some reason was offered only as a 2-door coupe.

The example below is a 1935 Model 1240 Silver Arrow owned until recently by the Academy of Art Automobile Museum* in San Francisco.  For 1935, the Silver Arrow's last year, the hood vents were grouped together and outlined by chrome trim.

The rear of these "production" Silver Arrow coupes was marked by a similar sloping fastback roofline to the Century of Progress cars, with a simplified, but still divided and tiny, rear window. Perhaps Pierce reintroduced running boards and separate fenders on the production Silver Arrow out of deference to the perceived conservatism of its clientele; it doesn't look like they would have been an effective cost-saving measure.

Faced with the continued prospect of dwindling car sales which amounted to only 842 cars in 1936, Pierce-Arrow introduced a novel, well-designed travel trailer called the Travelodge  in that year.  Built of aluminum panels on a steel frame, the Travelodge was offered in 3 sizes up to 19.5 feet (the Model A) and featured insulated walls, heated interiors with built-in cooking areas and baths, and hydraulic brakes actuated by a connection to the car ahead. In the case below, that car is a 1937 Pierce-Arrow V12 limousine. The Travelodge appeared in the same year as the better-known Airstream*, and 450 were sold over two years. 

Sadly, neither the travel trailers nor the experiments with streamlining were able to save Pierce-Arrow from the second wave of the Great Depression that hit in 1938.  The company declared bankruptcy that year, and the receivers took over in May.  According to the Pierce-Arrow Society, the last car was built from spare parts in late 1938 by chief engineer Karl Wise. Total production in that final year amounted to no more than a dozen eight-cylinder cars and a dozen twelves, one of which, a V12 phaeton, is shown below.

*Footnote:  For a look at the Pierce Silver Arrow in the context of the 1933 Century of Progress Fair, see our post from 5-31-20, "Vanished Roadside Attraction: Chicago's Century of Progress". And for the history of Phil Wright's other famous contribution to car design, visit "Willys Aero Saga: An Afterlife in Rio", posted on this site on 8-29-19.  Other cars from San Francisco's Academy of Art University are featured in "Roadside Attraction: 1st Impressions, Academy of Art Auto Museum" from 4-29-18.  Other streamlined travel trailer designs from the 1930s are featured in "When Mobile Homes Really Were Mobile", posted on July 30, 2017.

Photo Credits:
Top & 2nd: wikimedia

3rd & 4th from top:  Ruby Smith 
5th thru 7th:  the author

8th:  Frist Art Museum

9th:  Pierce Arrow Museum
10th:  George Havelka

11th:  Pierce Arrow Motor Car Company
12th & 13th:  Mecum Auctions
14th:  theoldmotor.com
Bottom:  pinterest.com