Roadside Attraction: LeMay Museum Part 2-----Independents and Oddballs

Among the roughly 3,000 cars the LeMay family collected, there were plenty from what we'd today label as independent manufacturers.  In this context "independent" means not part of Detroit titans Ford, Chrysler or General Motors.  These car makers included Pierce-Arrow in Buffalo, Willys Overland in Toledo, and Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg in Auburn, Indiana.  And of course they included Detroit's Packard, who produced the cars above during their time as the leader in the upper crust car market.  On the left, a 1923 model, next to a blue '30 and a gray '31, all with Packard's inline 8-cylinder side-valve engine.

The 1919 Stanley Model 735B, made in Watertown, MA, showed the independence of the company's founding brothers F.E. and F.O. Stanley by avoiding an internal combustion engine altogether.  Like all other Stanleys made starting in 1897, it was powered by a steam engine, in this case a rear-mounted 2-cylinder, 20 horsepower unit, while the boiler with famous safety valves was at the front, behind those sleepy-looking headlights...

The Duesenberg J was the flagship of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg and was featured in Part 1 of this report, but we couldn't resist a closeup of the radiator and hood ornament that fronted the 265 hp,  32-valve twin-cam inline eight.

The 1933 Hupmobile Series I-326 below featured a 302 cubic inch, inline 8 cylinder L-head engine sending 109 hp to the rear wheels through a 3-speed gearbox.  Detroit's Hupp Motor Car Company would fold in 1940, after making the rear-drive Skylark model based on body dies from the discontinued Cord 810 front-drive car from Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg.  For cars from the A-C-D combine, keep reading...

This Auburn Model 850Y cabriolet appeared the year after that Hupmobile, with sweeping new clamshell fenders and a lower, more streamlined profile than earlier Auburns.  The inline eight made by A-C-D's Lycoming Division produced 115 hp from 280 cubic inches, and sent power to the rear wheels through a 3-speed manual gearbox.  

The rumble seat at the rear of the 850Y offered space for 2 passengers, while others could huddle out of the weather under the convertible top.  The colorful, highly detailed '34 styling was part of A-C-D head E.L. Cord's  effort to attract sales during the Great Depression...

So was his second effort to offer an advanced car with front-wheel drive.  The Cord 810 stunned crowds when in appeared at New York's Auto Show in November 1935.  It followed the front-drive Cord L-29 offered from 1930 to '32, but didn't resemble that car, or any other car, in most ways.  For one thing, there was no traditional radiator grille in Gordon Buehrig's streamlined body design; chromed horizontal louvers wrapped around what was quickly named the "coffin nose".  Then there were those hidden headlights, which you cranked up out of the teardrop fenders at night...  

Along with hiding the headlights, Buehrig got rid of the running boards that were then standard features below the door sills (as on that blue Auburn).  The Cord 810 was low enough that you didn't need that step to get in.  A 288 cubic inch V8 drove the front wheels through a 4-speed, electric pre-selector gearbox, and made 115 hp. In 1937, the 812 version added a supercharger that raised power to 190.  Cord also offered Sportsman and Phaeton convertible models, and sticker prices ranged from $1,995 to $3,575. 

With the Great Depression grinding on, though, fewer than 3,000 drivers got a chance to sit behind this control panel, set below a windshield that could be opened for ventilation...

Two years after the last cars offered by Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg, Packard built the stately Super 8 convertible for 1939.   The 320 cubic inch inline eight made 135 hp, and the chassis, introduced in '37, featured independent front suspension.

All the fascination wasn't concentrated at the top end of the size or price scale during this period. This 1939 Crosley convertible featured a 2-cylinder, air-cooled engine driving the rear wheels and making about 120 hp less than the Packard, but boasted 50 mpg fuel economy.  The convertible from the Cincinnati company sold for $325 in '39, its first year.  On the same 80 inch wheelbase as the BMC Mini that would show up 2 decades later, it's a charmer...  

Like the Crosley, the 1937 Fiat Topolino (Italian for little mouse) was a front-engined, rear-drive car, and its 569cc inline four made about the same power.  Drivers could make the most of that power with a 4-speed gearbox.  Top speed was similar to the Crosley, around 50 to 53 mph.

The American Bantam was a version of the English Austin built in Butler, PA.  The black and yellow 1939 model at the LeMay is a Hollywood roadster on a 75 inch wheelbase.  The 46 cubic inch inline 4 made 20 hp.  The American Bantam Car Company made the very first Jeep prototype in 1940 in answer to US Army specifications for a light, all-terrain vehicle.  Though Willys and Ford got the big production contracts, Bantam produced Jeeps at the Butler factory throughout the war, and never went back to car production.

Crosley went back to car production after WWII, with a new engine, a 44 cubic inch (750cc) overhead cam inline four that became a favorite of amateur road racers.  From 1949, Crosley offered a 2-door, 4 seat sedan, a wagon, a Hotshot 2 seat roadster good for 85 mph, and this little fire truck, one of which hung out at our neighborhood amusement park near Chicago. 

Before the end of car production in 1952, there was also a fiberglass roadster body called the Skorpion made for the Crosley chassis by a California firm.  The LeMay Museum acquired theirs, one of maybe a hundred, in 2020...

Sales of microcars took off in Europe during the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, and one of those was the Messerschmitt KR200 built from 1955 to '64.  A  rear-mounted 191cc two-stroke single cylinder powered the single rear wheel and offered 4 speeds forward or in reverse because crankshaft rotation could be reversed.  The sideways-opening canopy offered access but not much ventilation.

The Isetta 300 made by BMW under license from Italy's Iso was also popular in this period. With a rear-mounted 298cc single-cylinder air cooled 4-stroke sending 13 hp to single rear wheel (4 wheels were an option) through a 4-speed gearbox, it was briefly imported into the US in BMW's 4-wheeled version.  That the design originated from a firm making refrigerators (Iso was from isotherm) sheds new light on that sideways-opening front door, doesn't it?

The LeMay has a collection of pickup trucks from the period before pickups were lifestyle accessories, and were likely to be driven by farmers like my uncle, for example.  The 1947 Studebaker M15 pickup could carry hay bales or construction materials on a 120-inch wheelbase with 80 hp from its flathead six.  It's a friendly-looking thing...

But then, Studebaker seemed to specialize in friendly-looking vehicles during this period. The South Bend, Indiana firm made history with the first truly modern postwar car body with Loewy Studios' design for their '47 model, especially the Starlight Coupe with its wrap-around rear window under a cantilevered roof.  For the 1950 model year, they updated this car with the famous bullet nose...

And by 1951, the year Studebaker brought out their V8 engine, they curved the grille below the nose into a kind of smile.  If the Studey Bullet Nose doesn't make you smile, you may have no sense of humor...

Studebaker's 1963 Avanti went from design sketches to running prototypes in a year, after a top-secret effort by Loewy Studios designers huddled in Palm Springs with an assignment to revive Studebaker's reputation for cutting-edge design. The 4-place GT coupe featured front disc brakes, a built-in padded roll bar, and an aerodynamic fiberglass body with air intake below the bumper, with covered headlights above it.  Supercharged versions of the standard V8 were available to customers, and the car set speed records at Bonneville.

These photos show the inward-curving flanks of the "Coke bottle" fuselage and the rearward slant to the wheel openings that imbue the form with a sense of movement.  Over 4,600 Avantis were sold before Studebaker abandoned US car production during the 1964 model year.  Ford's Mustang arrived to attract the youth market in the middle of that year, and Chevy's 1967 Camaro styling always seemed like a smooth jazz version of the edgy, cool jazz, hipster Avanti.  

Kaiser-Frazer founded its car building operation in 1945 after Henry Kaiser's shipyards had supplied Liberty ships for the war effort.  Though the company tried front-drive prototypes, the production cars offered were mechanically prosaic, with Continental flathead sixes like those in Checker cabs driving the rear wheels.  Body designer Howard "Dutch" Darrin was allowed to supersede his original, slab-sided body design with this glassy, curvy new shell for 1951, and Kaiser offered possibly the first hatchbacks, with up and down opening tailgates in 2 and 4-door versions, in lieu of station wagons.  They kept the outdated flathead six power, though, offering supercharging in 1954.  This 1953 Dragon model with fabric roof cover and special interior trim made 118 hp, but its sticker price of $3,924 would've bought a Chrysler V8.  Because of that price tag, Kaiser sold only 1,277 Dragons.

Ironically, though Kaiser and Willys passenger car production ended in the US after the 1955 model year, Kaiser's Jeep division outlived all the other independents. Kaiser bought Willys- Overland in 1953 for its Jeep division and related government contracts, and it kept American Motors going after that company bought Jeep from Kaiser in 1970.  Renault took a share in AMC Jeep in 1978 and sold the whole company to Chrysler in 1987, with Fiat taking a share in 2009, and Fiat Chrysler merging with PSA (Citroen and Peugeot) to become Stellantis in 2021.  The constant in the three most recent takeovers is the SUV boom in the US, which made the Jeep division a prize in all of them. 

Photo Credits:

3rd, 6th & 11th from top (Stanley, Auburn & Cord) + 3rd & 8th from bottom ((Kaiser + pickup trucks):  Duncan Mackenzie

10 from top (Cord Control Panel):  Wikimedia

All other photos are by the author.

Roadside Attraction: Impressions of America's Car Museum, the LeMay in Tacoma

Note to Subscribers:  Thanksgiving seems an appropriate time to think about people who need help obtaining food or medicine.   We've donated to the following organizations:  

Here in Boulder, the Harvest of Hope Pantry.  Their website is https://hopepantry.org

Globally, there's World Central Kitchen,  https://www.wck.org

Doctors Without Borders, https://give.doctorswithoutborders.org

Unicef, https://www.unicefusa.org

The LeMay, officially called America's Car Museum, opened in June 2012 under this expressive, curved roof structure of glued, laminated beams.  The primary architect was Alan Grant of Los Angeles, but input on the roof also came from LARGE Architects.  That roof is a bit deceptive, though, because the  museum tunnels into the ground by way of ramps like the one on the left above.  There are a lot of those ramps, and there's a need for them, because the LeMay displays more than 300 cars, about a tenth of the collection originally amassed by Harold LeMay, who had built a fortune in the salvage business, and his wife Nancy.   

There's a rotating display of cars from the permanent collection, and there are special exhibits like the current American Supercar show which opened October 25th.  There can be plenty of discussion (well, argument) about defining a supercar, but if being noticeable is a requirement, then the Oldsmobile Aerotech speed record car above checks that box.  In 1987, A.J. Foyd drove it to a flying mile record of just over 267 mph.  This long-tail version used a twin-turbocharged 2.3 liter four making 1,000 hp.  Cabin space allowed for the driver only...

But some supercars, like the mid-engined, Ford V8 powered De Tomaso Pantera at left above, had space for 2, and were aimed more at weekend touring fun than speed records, or even weekend racing.  But about 7 years before the Pantera appeared, Ford Advanced Vehicles launched the GT40 in endurance racing, hoping to win Le Mans. Ron Bradshaw's body design gave the car its name, because it was only 40 inches from the road to the top of that inward-sloping roof.  All the original GT40s were right-hand drive (maybe this one was converted to LHD), because somewhat in violation of  the American supercar theme, they were built in Slough, England.  But their V8 engines (usually 4.7 liters) came from Detroit, and sat behind the driver and ahead of a 5-speed ZF transaxle in this Mk. I example.  The Mk. II got a 4-speed manual to go with a 7 liter engine.  

After Ford offered a few (very few) Mk. III road cars to prosperous customers, they built the Mk. IV below.  This won Le Mans in 1967, following the 1-2-3 finish by Ford's 7 liter Mk. II in 1966, their first win at the 24 Hours.  Note the narrower cabin (less room for driver and passenger) and flatter flanks.   After 1967, the big 7 liter engine in the Mk. IV was banned at Le Mans.  No matter; Ford won again in '68 and '69 with a 4.7 liter Mk. I, the exact same car (not just the same type of car) in both years...

Rearward vision was almost nonexistent on the Mk. IV, so the driver really got some use of those fender-mounted mirrors...

Ford built a total of 105 GT40s between 1964 and '69, but only produced a dozen of the Mk. IV chassis like this red car, of which 10 remain.  Attention to everyday practicalities was minimal; note the deeply recessed license plate, which conveys no information except that the lucky owner has driven it on the street... 

The car that got Ford's Total Performance program rolling in the early Sixties, though, was not a Ford, and not even made in the USA.  It was an AC made in England, by 1962 a 9-year old design with a lightweight tubular chassis, 4-wheel independent suspension and disc brakes, all covered by the sweetly contoured, handmade aluminum body you see below.  Carroll Shelby saw it too, and knew that AC was looking for engines as the 2-liter Bristol six had gone out of production, and their own OHC six was even older.  AC, in fact had approached Daimler for their V8, but gotten turned down, so they built about 3 dozen Ace roadsters in this style with an English Ford Zephyr 6.  Shelby had other ideas...

He persuaded Ford to supply some of their new lightweight V8s (initially 260, then 289 cubic inches) and installed them in the AC roadsters.  As soon as he was able to make a few dozen of these, they were cleaning up in road races across the US.  Henry Ford II liked this.  The rest of the story has been told (reasonably well) in a movie called "Ford vs. Ferrari."

Among the cars that Shelby's AC Cobras routinely beat were Corvettes.  By the time they were competing against them, they were smaller, lighter Corvettes (Stingrays) than the curvy 1956-'57 design shown in front of James Dean (who raced a Porsche) below.  Still, Chevy gets credit for being the first American manufacturer to put a modern V8 in a reasonably light 2-seater with a 4-speed transmission, and for putting 4-wheel independent suspension (and eventually, 4-wheel disc brakes) in their Stingray.  By contrast, Ford's  1955-'57 T-Bird had been more of a boulevard cruiser.

There are plenty of surprises on those descending ramps, and on one of them we found a German counterpart to that Corvette (well, sort of).  BMW's 507 appeared in 1956 with this svelte, graceful alloy body design by Albrecht Goertz and a 3.2 liter aluminum V8.  Only 253 were built before the end of 1959, but one caught Elvis Presley's eye when he was in the Army in Germany, and he bought it on the spot.  Not an American supercar, perhaps, but enough for an American rock star...

Right next to that 507 was a car that had perhaps convinced BMW there was a market for an expensive 2-seater, that being the Mercedes-Benz 300SL coupe that had gone into production in 1954, after a less luxe version had won Le Mans in '52.  The 300SL was quickly nicknamed Gullwing because of its upward-opening doors, necessitated by the high structural sills.  The coupe featured a 3-liter SOHC fuel-injected six and a swing-axle rear end, and overlapped a roadster that replaced it in 1957. The roadster had lower sills, normal doors and less charisma, but offered disc brakes before the end in 1963.  Next to this Gullwing is a Mercedes 220SE convertible like the one that Cary Grant almost crashed in "North by Northwest."  But we digress...

If there were any American supercars in the late Twenties and Thirties, Duesenbergs qualified.  They were big, with 420 cubic inch inline 8s, but they had race-derived engineering, with dual overhead cams and four valves per cylinder decades before that became a trend.  The Murphy-bodied 1930 Model J shown here makes 265 hp; the supercharged SJ made 320 in "standard" form.  Standard is in quotation marks because all Duesenbergs were sold as chassis to be bodied to customer specifications by firms like Murphy, and only around 470 of the J and related SJ and JN were made in total before the end in 1937.  Included in that total were 2 of the supercharged, short-chassis, 2-seater SSJ, which may be the Holy Grail of Dueseys.  Oh, and Duesenbergs introduced the phrase "It's a Duesey" into American slang...

In 1914, as Europe stumbled into a catastrophic war, Americans were thinking about cars. The Stutz Bearcat below is considered by many to be America's first supercar.  Specifications included a 6.4 liter inline 4-cylinder engine developing all of 60 horsepower, a 3 speed gearbox, and mechanical brakes on the rear wheels only.  There were no doors and no top, but the looking glass windshield provided the driver with a bit of wind protection.  One thing that got established at this early stage was that if there was ever going to be a theme for supercars, it was not going to be about practicality.

Photo Credits:

4th, 6th & 10th from top:  Duncan Mackenzie

Bottom:  LeMay Museum on youtube.com

All other photos are by the author.