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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.
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