Help settle a bar room bet...Roadster History

I mostly agree! On the fence w/ #2. So if I change my windshield to a Duvall or Rodwell- is it still a roadster?

 

well...how many beers did it take to get to the point of "define"....just start with a old bucket of that many and drink back...."everybody's a winner"....
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Agree.

 

How removable does the windshield need to be? The 55 Corvette windshield does unbolt.

 

GEEZ,-----I've never seen such varied answers!
1. Last Ford production roadster was a 1937 model
2. Any of you guys old as I am (77), know that when discussing "old cars", are not talking Corvettes---Cobras---Jeeps---etc.---We are talking early iron.
3. Very easy answer----A "roadster" is defined as having a removable windshield & stanchions---No windows in the doors---Snaps around the seat back for a removable top----Optional side "izsing gl***" weather inserts for each door top.

Now when **** Scritchfield finished his '32 Phaeton in 1963, there was a little "FLAP" in the LAR club over it not being a "Roadster", so the LAR cons***ution was changed to read: "Any body style 1937 & older, as long as tops were removable to be a member"----Thats when the Cabriolets were also elgible for application for membership, even tho the windows rolled up & down.

Now go enjoy your brew!!!

 

American Bantam made a true roadster in 1940

 

Chili Phil makes a great, great point, however, about a rolled cowl. That characteristic really separates the men from the boys. Required to be a "roadster" or not? I'm coming around to his point of view. That requirement alone cuts out many more modern cars like the Viper. And would put the endpoint of the true production roadster to somewhere in the late '30s, I suppose.

Why does it make a difference? Because the roadster is the direct connection to the wagon, the buckboard and a number of other horse-drawn designs. As long as there were roadsters, automobile drivers could point to their cars and see the evolution from the wagon. After the roadsters left the scene, the automobile had taken on a design life of its own. So it isn't a silly argument to me. We're talkin' real auto history here!

So, the list for a "true" roadster:

1) Open car with no fixed roof

2) Front seat and no rear seat (but possibly a rumble seat)

3) Removable windshield

4) No sidegl*** windows

5) Rolled cowl

After the 1936 Ford, did any other domestic manufacturer make a production automobile that fit this definition? Dunno, need the resources of the HAMB to answer it.

And bravo to Jimmy63t, who pointed out the Bantam. However, the '40 had fixed windshield posts, but the '39 did not. So the '39 Bantam has all 5 the characteristics that are outlined above.

Anything later that that? I'm thirsty for a cheap beer...I'm feelin' lucky here.

 

Well the rolled cowl does eliminate any possibility of including a modern car; but that's all it does. It does not fit the definition of a roadster by any definition I've ever heard, which is a car with no provision for roll up side gl***, period.
But if the purpose is just to eliminate modern cars for the sake of enhancing one's percieved view of old iron...fire away, make up new definitions to suit yourself.
But the First Gen Viper RT10 is a roadster, just like the Cobra's are.

 

Are you guys saying the 55 vette didn't have roll up side windows? I would have thought they did, but I don't know for sure. In the 63 - 67 Sting Rays, I think most people called them coupes and roadsters.

 

Just in case your betting beers at the local Pub. You better not forget the Austin Healy 3000. I know your talking domestic but be careful of the drinking location and discussing such topics.

 

The connection here is to the horse-drawn wagon. It is an important one. Here is a reference off the web that I found. A huge array of carraige types, but all have a specific meaning. Only a non-auto enthusiast would miss the connection to traditional cars that early manufacturers chose to describe their offerings.

So exactly, precisely, "What is a Roadster?" That's what we are getting at here. It is the connection to the horse drawn carraige that is what is important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage

An almost bewildering variety of horse-drawn carriages existed. Arthur Ingram's Horse Drawn Vehicles since 1760 in Colour lists 325 types with a short description of each. By the early 19th century one's choice of carriage was only in part based on practicality and performance; it was also a status statement and subject to changing fashions. The types of carriage included the following:
Barouche
Berlin
Brake
Britzka
Brougham
Buggy
Cabriolet
Calash
Cape cart
Cariole
Carryall
Chaise
Chariot
Clarence
Coach
Coupé
Croydon
Curricle
Dogcart
Dos-à-dos
Drag (carriage)
Droshky (Drozhki)
Fiacre
Fly
Four-in-hand
Gharry
Gig
Gladstone
Hackney
Hansom
Herdic
Jaunting car
Landau
Limousine
Mail coach
One-horse carriage
Park Drag
Phaeton
Post chaise
Randem
Ratha
Road Coach
Rockaway
Sociable
Spider phaeton
Stagecoach
Stanhope
Sulky
Surrey
Tarant*** (Tarantas)
Telega
Tilbury
Trap
Victoria
Village cart
Vis-à-vis
Voiturette
Wagonette
Whim
Whiskey

 

From another source...possibly the definitive answer??? Dunno

From ****s Automobile Encyclopedia, 1922, page 9, The Body, ...'the following descriptions of the various bodies are proposed by the Car Body Division of the Society of Automotive Engineers (S.A.E.)

"Roadster" a small open type body with one fixed cross seat for 2 p***engers and a space or compartment at the rear for carrying luggage." "Folding seats fitted into the luggage compartment are sometimes used" The type has 2 doors and a folding top with side curtains that are removable".

 

I'm surprised nobody has looked Roadster up in the dictionary. My Webster's says.
"An automobile with an open body and a folding fabric top that seats two"

 

Early 50s crosley supersport



Looks like a "roadster" to me!!

the hotshots didnt have doors...

oldebob, you beat me to it!

 

I always thought of a Roadster as being a a 2 seater with no side windows in the doors.
It was the cheapest car to build for major production. Less sheet metal = more profit.
Which is how the '32 ford roadster became so popular.
You could go to a junkyard and buy one, if you were charged for the price of s**** steel, there wouldn't be much on the body (A highschool kid with an afterschool job, who saved his money, could have afforded the purchase) and for the most part the frame would except the V8 with little to no conversion. Which gets into another topic of the flathead and why that was so popular. Oh and there were so many of them made.

 

Yes a 49 was my first car, slip in windows, manual top and no back seat

 

Interesting that there are so many variations of a "roadster". Personally, I don't think we need rolled cowl to be a roadster.

Isn't this a roadster?

 

Jeez looks like all of you that made the bet are screwed just buy each other rounds and call it a day..
I have no historical value to ad.

 

Removable top
Removable folding windshield
no gl*** in doors (Mickey Mouse sliders that bolt on)
Two seats
Two doors
That's a 1961 IHC Scout!

 

Ford of Australia offered a roadster in 1939. it had same body as the '37 but with '39 sheetmetal and mechanicals.

'39 Chev roadster






The '39 Roadster was a little different as well. An extra cross member on the ch***is meant the battery was relocated from its traditional spot under the driver's feet to a bracket on the firewall. The windscreen was lower and smaller than other '39s, and there were fabric ****on-down side curtains instead of roll-down windows in the doors. The roadster came in two variants- one with rumble seat, and one with a conventional trunk lid. There was no four-door open tourer or 'phaeton' version - this body type was phased out by Holden in 1937.


and a '39 Hudson



roadsters don't necessarily have to have two seats. Ford offered what was called a Club Roadster which had a back seat

 

Jamie,

Thats got to be my late friend Max Knight's old car - he bequethed it to his daughter he affectionately called "number 2". New interior and paint since Max p***ed.

BTW it originally ran a 216 6 with the wade blower setup i now have

 

I dunno, seems like the Shelby American CSX (new) series cars are still in the running (strictly by those definitions)...

 

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

I'm willing to have the windowless '37 Ford be a roadster, just because it's esoteric. Granted that the removable windshield on the earlier cars adds to their appeal.

As for the postwar stuff, I'd say the Dodge Wayfarer was the last true roadster, but who cares?

 

An excerpt from The Hot Rod World of Robt. Williams, pg.29. Williams speaking here on design, history and roadsters particularly...

 

When I was 13 I bought my first car,a 1938 Ford Club Roadster.
Side curtains but had a back seat so I guess it doesn't qualify as a "true"
roadster.Unfortunately no pics.Paid $30(actually 15 pounds as decimal currency hadn't started then).
Had some great fun in that one driving it around the private road at the top of our hill.

 

Just a dumb question about the removable windshield thing.
In the years when a Ford roadster had a removale windshield, did any of the closed cars of the same year and same body style have a fixed windshield? None of the stock Model A, Deuce, or '33 Fords I've been in did... If the fixed vs. not fixed windshield was a model wide styling choice by the manufacturer, it would be hard to call a car not a roadster based solely on that criteria, if it has fixed seating for 2, 2 doors, and no roll-up side windows.
For that matter, it also depends on how you define 'removable'. Just because the fasteners aren't exposed for easy access does not mean the windshield frame is welded on. In fact, I think almost all of them are removable until you get to the mid 80s, when they started making it a roll bar.

 

My understanding of the importance of the removable windshield is what Robert Williams is getting at in the quotation above, "the cl***ical open car." Along this line of styling, the removable windshield is an addition to the body, not integral to it I would think.

But I don't know, I'm only trying to learn here from people who know much more about the subject than me.

"Roadster" is one of those terms that is held in very high regard (if not the highest regard), but there doesn't seem to be total agreement on exactly, precisely what one is. It seems the term evolved and changed over time to include a wider variety of automobiles than what was originally included. Not unusual at all.

 

I don't buy the removeable windshield ingredient as an essential element of a roadster. Phaetons or tourers as we called them in Australia had removeable windscreens in the same way.

The conventional approach adopted over the years has been for two doors, single bench seat or two buckets, fold down or removeable top, and no wind up windows in the doors. They for me are the essentials when it comes to American derived cars from the 20's-30's.

The issue of wind-up windows seems to have more relevance where (in the case of the evolution of the US built Fords of the 30's) there is a similar two door configuration with windup windows also offered. Using that example then there had to be appropriate naming to identify the different cars. Hence the Cabriolet and then simply the Convertible nomenclature being used. Of course over time the option of wind-up windows or no wind-up windows disappeared. The idea of a roadster from those days has lingered on however in this day and age I don't think absence of wind-up windows remains definitive.

There have always been exceptions from time to time like the '37 Ford four seat Club roadster above. Jaguars "E" type came in "roadster" form however is equipped with windup windows.

There will always be examples that disprove the rule. My two bobs worth.

 

This is the way I understood it to be, and in 39 Ford Australia offered convertibles and roadsters.

No door gl*** = roadster
Door Gl***+door frame = Cabrolet
Door Gl*** no door frame = convertible

 

why dont u guys just buy your own beer look at the can of worms you opened. just jerking your chain ,enjoyed it