Cars and Coffee (or Maybe Tea) in New Zealand: Deco Cars in Napier's Art Deco Downtown

Frequent reader Louis Bialy recently wrote to tell us a story about the convergence of old cars (our original excuse for these posts) with historic architecture (our other fave subject).  It's the story of the Napier Art Deco festival, which includes cars from the Art Deco period like the 1927 Lea Francis with teddy bear mascot above, as well as earlier ones like the 1920 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost below...

Note the crowds milling around all the old cars, something like you'd see at an American Cars & Coffee event, or on Ocean Avenue in Carmel, CA during Monterey Car Week... 

But this is the city of Napier, on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand.  And how it came to acquire a downtown lined with Art Deco buildings forming a backdrop to this summertime (February) car fest is a story of seismic consequence...

In the year that this 1931 Studebaker President 8 Roadster was built (the then-new "ovaloid" headlights are a clue), a powerful earthquake slammed Napier, destroying its downtown.  Collapsing buildings and fires killed 256 people. In some areas, uplift of the ground level neared 9 feet...

The government and the community got to work quickly to rebuild from this catastrophe, and the Streamline Moderne style influenced the Sound Shell below, built in 1935...

...as well as the T & G Building completed in the following year.  Napier, along with Miami Beach, is considered a treasure trove of Art Deco and related styles today, and its Art Deco Festival celebrates that history.

The British Star Motor Company was in business from 1898 to 1932.  It was unrelated to the American Star, which only lasted from 1922 to '28.  The British Star had more style than the American one, which was fostered by William C. Durant. Back in 1908, he'd founded something called General Motors... 

This '36 Plymouth seems right at home in the land of Deco.  Back home in the America of 1936, Plymouth was 3rd in sales behind Chevy and Ford, with 520,000 cars sold.  In that Depression year, Ford sold "only"  930,000 cars. 

The grille, hood ornament and insignia on this green Plymouth show that it's a '35 model.  Power came from a 201 cubic inch, 82 hp inline six.  Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler sales were good enough to finance construction of New York CIty's Chrysler Building, another Art Deco landmark...

The stately '36 or ''37 Pierce-Arrow* below was built not long before the Buffalo, New York manufacturer's swan song in 1938.  Like Packard, the company built its reputation with a smooth straight 8 but also built a V12.  A brief affiliation with Studebaker earlier in the Thirties presaged that company's ill-fated union with Packard in the Fifties.

Headlight nacelles formed into the fenders had been a Pierce-Arrow trademark forever, and must've seemed futuristic before becoming commonplace in the Forties.  In 1936, Pierce built 636 eight-cylinder cars and 206 V12s...

Pierce's main competitor before Cadillac's heyday was Packard.  Early in the 20th century, automotive hood ornaments attained a sophistication that would show up in automotive advertising half a century later.  The ornament below is on a Packard...

The Belgian Minerva marque started with bicycles in 1897 and by 1900 had expanded their line with motocyclettes.  In 1908 the firm took on a license for the Knight sleeve-valve engine, and this was the foundation for their subsequent line of cars, which was know for smoothness, high price, and high oil consumption.

The Graham Paige below looks like a 1930 model.  After early 1930, the company applied the Paige name only to its taxis and commercial vehicles.  Their run of success ended in the Deco era with a Streamline Moderne car, the Graham Hollywood, which used Cord 810 body dies, in 1940.  

Somebody obviously takes loving care of their Joan; she's an export model of the DeSoto, closely related to the 1938 Plymouth.  On the Plymouth, the chrome grille bars continued up into the painted chrome arc under the hood ornament.  Joan's is a friendly-looking face, all things considered...

The Auburn 851 Speedster* replica was in keeping with the Art Deco theme.  Only 143 of the supercharged originals were built in 1935-'36.

This example came all the way from Hawaii.  Modern wheels and tires tell it's a replica; the originals had four exhausts along the left (driver's) side of the engine bay, signaling the Lycoming straight 8 power.

Other Yankee iron from from independent car makers was on evidence, including this 1938 Senior Packard*.  Power could come from an inline 8 or a V12...

...as in the '36 V12 below.  By 1936 the Packard Twelve was at its peak size, 473 cubic inches, much more like a locomotive than the 320 cubic engine in the Super Eight from '37 to '39.

The 1930 Studebaker roadster below shows that the South Bend, Indiana company paid attention to style even before it famously took on Raymond Loewy as its design consultant later in the decade.  Compare it with the 1931 model pictured earlier and you can spot a lot of differences. The President inline 8 made 80 hp from 250 cubic inches that year.

The 1937 Buick below is a reminder that Buicks (today more popular in China than in the US) were once popular enough in the British Commonwealth to justify making them in right-hand drive.  King George of England was perhaps the most famous owner...but back then it was still called the British Empire.

This stately Rolls Royce from 1937, however, is a reminder that there will always be an England, or something very much like it.  Not sure if this is the Phantom III introduced in 1936, but the only Rolls V12 served official functions, and this car has official flags.  And that's a reminder there will be island nations like New Zealand as long as there are islands.  It's as good a place as any to complete our tour.

Photo Credits:  All color photos of the cars were generously provided by Louis Bialy, from Wiseman's Ferry in New South Wales.  Photos of Napier's architecture were found at  Wikimedia.

*Footnotes:  The Pierce-Arrow saga was summarized here in "Pierce-Arrow: From Gilded Cage to Silver Arrow", posted June 26, 2020.  We had a look at all the Auburn Speedster varieties in "Auburn Speedsters: In the Shadow of Cord and Duesenberg", posted July 8, 2020.  And we surveyed coach-built Packards a couple of times, in "Packard at the Peak: Ask the Man Who Owns One" on July 30, 2020, and "Hollywood Stars: Dutch Darrin's Designs for Packard", which appeared here on August 4, 2020.