History We ALL Love a DARE! PIX of TRULY Extinct Makes?

Guys, I am not clear on one point, and I don't know if I missed smething in the write-ups. Was there a connection between Mercer and Elcar, OR was it just that the two makes chanced to get disussed in the same post?

Secondarily, were those final years' Mercers true Mercers? Take it any way you want.

 

I really do agree about the Diana radiator ornament. Art Nouveau. HOWEVER it's surely not perfect. The work would have had more visual focus and impact WITHOUT all the busywork at the bottom (symbolism vague, too). I'll take Pierce's bowman any day -- cleaner design.

 

You mean this one too!!

This is the project that I was working on at CAAM when the volunteer program got shut down and the Resto Facility shut and put up for sale!!

1925 Sterling-Knight Model Six Sedan ​

 

Biflex on Leyland of Cadillac fame built Lincoln prior to Edsel and Henry Ford ownership.


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1921 Lincoln L-101 Touring ​

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I don't quite understand where the pictures of our familys Elcar I posted here disappeared to, so I will repost them as attachments as well as the memorial to my Dad that seems to of disappeared too.

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1925 Elcar

Back in 1965, Dad was reading the car ads in the local newspaper when he came across one for a 1925 Elcar. His response; What's an Elcar???? So, we went to find out. Turns out it was owned by an old childhood friend of Dads by the name of John Weller who now ran Weller Garbage Disposal (Don't believe they exist any longer---Gee, I was only 10 at the time--- LOL)
,
Anyways, $200.00 later the car was ours. It had a cracked head but that wasn't too hard as the car had a Lycoming motor. If memory serves me right (remember, I was only 10), I think Dad may have sent the head to Glenn Pray in Broken Arrow Oklahoma and had him weld it up. Dad did get the car running and we had it for about four years when he sold it to Bill Locke, the Elcar expert and collector so that he could buy the 1934 Ford 4 Door that we still have after 40 years.

As I recall, the interesting thing about the car was it was a 6 (model 6-65) Cylinder and that made it kind of rare as most of the Elcars that did survive were eights. Many years later, Dad discovered an identical car, another 6 cylinder in a a Garage in Mpls. Could still be there for all I know. I never saw the car and Dad isn't here to ask, so for now, that one remains a mystery.

Following is a nice memorial to my Dad by a good friend. It's only been nine and a half months, so it can still be tough at times.

 

Yes, there was a connection with Elcar and the "Last Mercer". I've just about got the whole Special Interest Autos Article scanned in and will post it some time tomorrow so you can read the whole story.

 

Yes, but some one has yet to explain "how they work"???? for confused people like myself.

HJ; GREAT coverage on the Liberty!

 

In 1908, the fledgling Shawmut Automobile Company (1906-1908) of Stoneham, MA -- flush with racing and endurance laurels -- was stricken by a factory-destroying fire from which only one or two 1908 Shawmut cars were rescued. Simultaneously, mining heir John Guggenheim was planning his own transcontinental "Great Race," spurred by the newspaper success of the New York to Paris event that same year. Ostensibly, Guggenheim fostered the event to promote the fast-growing road and highway improvement movement in the country.

When the race began, early June of 1909, only five entrants had enlisted, three of them previous event winners, in race trim or cars specifically built as racers. Guggenheim's own Italia was one of the latter, while an Acme, a Stearns and a Shawmut "Roundabout" were adapted for endurance and fuel economy. Henry Ford's two entries weighed less than 1,000 pounds each after being stripped down for the event.

For the worthy Shawmut, it represented a last chance to generate public attention and, hopefully, financial backer to rebuild their factory.

Mechanical failure took Stearns out the first day of the competition, and Guggenheim's Italia petered out in Wyoming as the race wound down, leaving only Shawmut and the two model Ts. One of the Ts "won" the race by 17 hours, until judges later learned that Ford personnel had changed the engine partway through the race. The Ford win was negated and -- five months after the checkered flag -- the Shawmut was the declared the official race winner.

By that time, Ford had already sponsored a large publicity campaign that would cause Ford sales to surge. But the true race winner, Shawmut, was officially out of business. Some today speculate that the race "win" may have saved and spurred Ford at a fateful moment. But certainly, the time lost in finding Shawmut the real winner cost Shawmut any place in the market -- and, perhaps, in popular history.

Today, Shawmut is but a sad footnote in auto history, mostly appreciated only by car historians and enthusiasts.


Sincere appreciation is expressed to internet resource Car Lust
for this photo of the 1908 Shawmut "Roundabout" in race trim, and
with F.A. Pettingell at the wheel, for the mid-1909 transcontinental
version of the "Great Race."


[Importantly, in terms of this thread them, Shawmut -- on the ropes -- arranged to sell Moon Model C and D cars under the name Hol-Tan for 1908. The public wasn't buying, and the '09 Great Race became the company's last hope. One source says that there are NO surviving Hol-Tan automobiles. Extinct.]

 

Hey there SunRoof! Here is ALL I remember. Back in the early '70s when the feds were pressuring the industry to put sturdy bumper on cars ("bumpers" had become little more thna trim pieces), I remember seeing two news items, one on TV and one (of all places) in the National Inquirer. Both touted that the industry HAD actually had an available bumper, early on, that prevented body damage at lower speeds.

The print piece stated the case and showed the bumper. The TV piece showed vintage film of a BiFlex-equipped tourer running headlong into a tree at 15 or 20 MPH, suffering NO body damage.

But bumpers were still largely optional extras in the early days, and I am sure the ballyhooed BiFlex was not cheap! (I think FLEX is the key syllable on these two-piece bumpers!!! I have always wondered if, in fact, they were made of spring steel, as well.)

 

HJ, that is sad, INDEED! Your pix of the Knight and Lincoln, though, clearly show how the bumpers attached to the frame! REALLY makes me believe my own speculation about spring steel.

QUOTE: This is the project that I was working on at CAAM when the volunteer program got shut down and the Resto Facility shut and put up for sale!!

1925 Sterling-Knight Model Six Sedan​

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Hey there SunRoof, buddy, you work hard enough. When you get the chance to put up the Elcar/Mercer material will be soon enough. THIS thread CAN really induce people to work overtime!!! LOL

[BTW, I guess the one question was IF the orginal mercer company had dried up and, then, was REVIVED by another interest.]

 

You know, it strikes me that along the way here we have not only had some interesting investigations BUT ACTUALLY TURNED UP SOME EXTINCT AND EXTREMELY RARE CARS! I mean, SURE, we've had fun, but the quest hasn't failed -- far from it.

I can't laundry-list the rarest and the extinct, but a few do pop to mind: Heine-Velox, Beaver, Benson, Spaulding, Beechcraft Plainsman, the final prototype Peerless V-16, the Hol-Tan and the Shawmut.

Is it about time we sort of TAKE STOCK and put together a LIST of the EXTINCT AND ULTRA-RARE we have tracked down??? With 70-some pages of material, it would take me six months to do such a list. But, could each of YOU guys just bend your brains a bit and REMEMBER the makes that stick in your minds??? No need to make rocket science out of it, okay? Just what you remember after reflecting 5 minutes! BTW, include your best WAG as to NUMBER of surviving specimens!!!

Use your own judgement: Post here, OR just PM me and I'll put 'em in some kind of logical order, then post all at once.

 

by WJ Grotenhuis - 1922 - All 4 versions
Automobile bumper. United States Patent 1413221. Inventors: ... BIFLEX PRODUCTS COMPANY.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/1413221.html

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by WE Ericson - 1926 - All 2 versions
Automobile bumper. United States Patent 1571249. Inventors: Ericson, Willard E. Publication Date: ... Assignee: BIFLEX PRODUCTS COMPANY.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/1571249.pdf

 

HJ, that's interesting stuff about Wm. Grotenhuis, the inventor. If I understand correctly, he invented it and sold production rights to Biflex, maybe outright OR a percentage of profits?

Since my computer has been hobbling along, I didn't dare open the PDFs to see illustrations. But THANKS!

 

I do not wish to stray off the topic too far, but I feel the era of classic-car standing hood ornaments deserves to be included in discussions here. The Goddess Diana radiator ornament just sticks in my brain, and I have to examine this relatively brief trend when hood ornaments were detailed and expressive, before turning into more stylized, even abstract, symbols of speed and aerodynamics. The '20s, in particular, were a vibrant, generally optimistic time, and art often reflected public sentiment.

The Diana hood ornament strikes me in a couple of ways. Interestingly, it is somewhat typical of major architectural works of the time. Right or wrong, pieces often blended Neo-Classical elements with those of the passing Art Nouveau movement and the emerging Art Deco trend, so popular from the later '20s well into the '30s. Some sculptural pieces worked well, and some appear quite "busy," especially to the modern eye.

Though I do not know the sculptor responsible for the Diana ornament, I could not escape the vision of Hermon A. MacNeil's depiction of the Goddess Liberty for the 1916 through 1931 U.S. quarter-dollar (left below).

Where am I going with this? Simply that I would like to see what YOU guys feel are some of the more striking ornaments of the post-WWI through '30s period. I've stated that my favorite is the Pierce-Arrow bowman, but I also have a curious affinity for the standing Indian-head ornaments of the late-'20s/early-'30s Pontiacs!

Sincere appreciation is expressed to Wikipedia, the Online Encyclopedia
for this image of sculptor Hermon MacNeil's work.​

 

Repeating the Diana mascot again to illustrate the previous point. (And SORRY the MacNiel quarter turned out so HUGE! Don't know why, exactly.)

 

I think you're right Jimi !!

 

I'm going to quote myself and put another plug in for this book "The Splendid Stutz".

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Cost is $70.00 plus shipping and handling. 392 pages with 500 pictures and illustrations. This is an excellent history of Stutz and I would consider a must for any prewar car buff. My only (minor) complaint is the quality of the pictures reproduced is not great in some cases.

The last Stutz cars were produced in 1934 although a few remained unsold into 1935. It is thought the last new Stutz cars were sold in England sometime in 35/36. These last ones were the DV32 Dual Overhead Cam Straight 8 cars. Total production over the life of the company was only 35k cars. In the last few years of production, 32,33,34 only a few hundred cars were made total.

A little known fact is that a Stutz came in second in the 1928 LeMans behind one of the 4 Bentley. The highest finish for an American car until Ford won in 1966 with the GT40.

 

The 1950s represented an optimistic era, underscored by an effusive public faith in the wonders of science and engineering and a fascination with every new gimmick! Enter on this stage the Ford Skyliner retractable hardtop convertible of 1957 - 1959. These cars are by no means super-rare, but they are today scarce and are seldom seen outside of a car show.

In brief, the hard, steel tops did, in fact, retract into a hidden resting position in the cars' trunks -- an operation fully automatic and taking about a minute. Most of the engineering credit for this relatively smooth-working system is due the Lincoln Division, which had hoped to make such a version of the now near-classic Continental Mark II. When projections showed that such a Lincoln model couldn't come close to recouping production costs, Ford became the beneficiary of Lincoln's R&D work. (It seems a tad odd that there was no Mercury or Edsel version. But, then, they were part of the M-E-L Division at FoMoCo.)

Sitting President Dwight Eisenhower lent support to the public optimism by taking delivery on the first '57 Skyliner!

But in the '50s, as now, fads melt away quickly, and after slim sales in '59 the Skyliner went the way of paper dresses and the pet rock. For the record, approximate Skyliner sales were as follows: 1957 -- 21,000; 1958 -- 15,000; and 1959 -- 13,000. Fortunately, the public eye was on the Edsel debacle, so no one much seemed to notice the passing of the hardtop convertible from the auto scene.

For the record, the three-year series was predated by the '54-'56 Ford Skyliner series. Though touted as a hardtop convertible, it was, in fact, a hardtop car with a half-roof bubble made of plastic. Also, it should be noted that the French Peugeot lays claim to the hardtop convertible with a 1937 model. And America's first hardtop convertible was the short-lived Buffalo-made Playboy. The company squeezed out less than 100 of the spunky little cars between 1946 and 1949. The top, though smooth operating, had to be stowed away by hand.

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This photo of a '58 Ford Skyliner is gratefully acknowledged to Bill Vance
of his online CanadianDriver/Motoring Memories site. Bill is an excellent, crisp and incisive writer/editor. For a TON more details on the Skyliner series,
please see and enjoy Bill's full article.​

 

HJ, I know -- and you know -- you are a dog! LOL

 

AlsAncle, that is FASCINATING stuff about a fascinating company!!! I am surprised the directors would permit the hanging-on production from remaining parts those last few years.

BTW, do you have details about the death of Stutz's favorite driver leading them, directly, to withdrawing from racing altogether? I think that was '30.

 

Taken from http://www.teamdan.com/archive/lsr/lockhart/lockhart.html
Frank Lockhart

Stutz Black Hawk

Born on the 3rd April 1903 in Dayton, Ohio, Lockhart received little formal education, but he allegedly grew up living next door to the father of the Wright brothers, who introduced Lockhart to engineering in his garage. His father died when he was young, and his mother moved the entire family to Los Angeles, the hot-bed of the Californian racing scene. Lockhart bought himself a Ford Model T to build a racing car, and at the same time learned engineering at the Miller Products Company. When Miller went to Indianapolis in 1926, Lockhart went with him, and after shaking down a car and lapping faster than the works drivers, he got a ride in the race. And won it.
In 1927, Lockhart started to think about the Land Speed Record. His Stutz Black Hawk weighed less than 3000 lbs (6608 kg), with two Miller straight 8 engines joined together to create a blown 16 cyclinder engine. He got several people from the Duesenberg factory to help him build it, and got sponsorship from Stutz. When Malcolm Campbell saw the car, he said that it was so lightweight that the car may well sail out of control - and so it did, twice, the second time killing driver Lockhart on the 25th April 1928 on Daytona Beach.

 

Actually know of several people who own Retractibles in my area.
In grand Island NY this past summer was their annual convention. Had to go check them out.
http://rides.webshots.com/album/573583880SbqMwl




What was perhaps a novelty at purchase time is now a familiar feature, of no more interest than the remote-locking buttons on today's keyfobs. How times have changed.
The Eisenhowers, and all the other good American citizens who flocked to Ford showrooms back in 1957, can be forgiven for thinking Ford had invented something new and startling. In fact, the original retractable went on sale in France some 23 years earlier.
The 1934 Peugeot 601 series debuted a car with a power-operated retractable metal top, conceived by Georges Paulin. The idea was continued the next year in the new Peugeot 402, a line of streamlined cars in the Chrysler Airflow mold that included the Eclipse, a three-passenger coupe with a steel top that disappeared into a rear-hinged trunk compartment.
When the Eclipse was enlarged into a six-passenger car in 1937, powered top operation was dropped to keep costs down, but the manual mechanism was so well-balanced and easy to use that it was perfectly acceptable to most customers.
The Eclipse and its 402-series stablemates were victims of World War II; production ended after a mere five years. Another retractable, Chrysler's 1941 Thunderbolt, never got past the show-car stage. A few further attempts by smaller manufacturers fared no better.

In an era of flamboyant styling and "gee-whiz" engineering features, Ford may have put the "topper" on the period when it introduced the Skyliner retractable hardtop in 1957. Practicality be damned; this one was for stopping the neighbors in their tracks.

Even though the public didn't seem to be clamoring for cars that combined the attributes of hardtops and convertibles, the idea began to reassert itself in the early 1950s in the mind of Gil Spear, head of Ford's Advanced Design studio.
Spear built a scale model of his concept, which caught the eye of styling executive Gene Bordinat. After word of Spear's model -- dubbed the Syrtis with "Roof-O-Matic" -- reached higher-ups, the company approved more than $2 million to further develop the idea. Work got under way in 1953.


in motion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HL5TttgmzA

But what about the Gaylord retractible?
1955, 1956, 1957 Gaylord

by the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide

Browse the article 1955, 1956, 1957 Gaylord

Introduction to 1955-1957 Gaylord
The 1955-1957 Gaylord, one of the most intriguing vehicles in auto history, was designed by an unlikely duo. Jim and Ed Gaylord were heirs to a fortune: their father had invented the bobby pin, an inoffensive little piece of metal that proved to be worth a couple dozen oil wells on the world market.

Classic Cars Image Gallery
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The 1955-1957 Gaylord was conceived with world-class performance and luxury-car refinement in mind. </CENTER></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Growing up in the late 1930s, the brothers Gaylord could have anything they wanted. Most often this turned out to be a fast car, anything from the 1949 V-8 Cadillac which Ed claimed would lose a Jaguar on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, to the cream of European exotica.

But Jim and Ed were not your run-of-the-mill rich kids; they were natural engineers, who made it their business to learn everything they could about cars. When in 1954 they decided to build the ultimate production sports car, those who knew them actually thought they might succeed.

The concept of the 1955-1957 Gaylord was world-class performance combined with luxury-car refinement: total isolation from noise and vibration. To achieve these seeming self-canceling goals, the Gaylords decided to spend whatever it took, hence the 1955-1957 Gaylord's estimated retail price of $10,000. (Jim soon decided this was not enough to cover costs, so he blithely raised the tab to $17,500.)

The frame was constructed of chrome-moly tubing, to which were attached channel steel perimeters and a strong steel platform. The insides of the tubes were rustproofed and all were sealed, making condensation impossible.

The suspension of the 1955-1957 Gaylord looked conventional, but wasn't. The independent front wishbones used oversized rubber bushings and had "maximum triangulation," in Jim Gaylord's words. This gave enormous wheel travel, but relatively little movement at the mounting points. The suspension was lubed with permanent molybdenum disulfide; ten years before the no-grease chassis, the Gaylords put one on the street.

Detail features on the 1955-1957 Gaylord included variable-ratio power steering (controlled manually with a dashboard knob); modified Hydra-Matic (no shift occurred until peak rpm was reached in any gear, unless it was shifted manually); a "no-creep" feature; double-safe instruments featuring both needle gauges and warning lights. The engine was initially a 331 Chrysler hemi, but Ed Cole convinced the brothers that the 1956 Cadillac 365 was lighter and quieter.

The styling of the 1955, 1956, 1957 Gaylord, by Brooks Stevens Associates, wasn't up to the engineering, mainly because of a contradictory goal: "a modern car with classic overtones."

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One of the more novel features of the 1955-1957 Gaylord was a retractable hardtop that disappeared into the deck.
</CENTER></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>For example, the Gaylords had wanted P-100 headlamps -- but they made the car look like a malevolent four-foot owl, and had to be scrubbed. They also wanted to revive the classic "open wheel" look. This was tried on the prototype, but proved impractical -- it allowed road grit to pepper the bodywork.

Conventional wheel wells were then used, the wheels decorated with Eldorado Sabre Spoke wheel covers bearing special "double G" emblems. The door design of the 1955-1957 Gaylord, which Stevens called the "Washington coach door," looked terrific -- a sleek upward cut, opening along the line of the ivory two-tone color panel, itself inspired by the classics.

Final touches of novelty on the 1955-1957 Gaylord were a retractable hardtop which disappeared into the deck, and a spare tire that slid out from a rear panel and flopped upright on the road, where it could easily be rolled into position.

The retractable top on the 1955-1957 Gaylord -- much simpler than the later Ford Skyliner's -- required only one motor for the whole operation, and the sequence could be reversed at any point. When GM's chairman saw the Gaylord top retract at the Paris Auto Salon in 1955, he remarked to his cadre of engineers, "You bastards told me this couldn't be done. So how did these idiots do it?"

 

More pictures of Lockhart's Blackhawk:

 

Stutz at LeMans

From http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z12846/1928-Stutz-Model-BB-Blackhawk-Boattail.aspx

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is a grueling endurance battle that tests stamina, speed, and durability. In 1928 a Stutz Series BB Black Hawk Speedster, driven by Edouard Brisson and Robert Bloch, was entered in the French LeMans race. The vehicle did well, leading for most of the race. Half way through the 22nd hour, the gearbox broke on the Stutz and a Bentley 4.5-liter was able secure a first place finish. The Stutz was second, the best an American car had ever placed in this prestigious race.

In 1929, the Stutz Company decided to increase their chances of victory by entering more than one vehicle into the Le Mans race. The vehicles were designed and prepared especially for the race. Gordon Buehrig was tasked with designing the bodies for the 2-seater sportscars. A modified 5.5-liter straight 8-cylinder with a supercharger were placed in the front and powered the rear wheels. Three vehicles entered by Stutz Paris, Colonel Warwick Wright, and Charles Weymann were anxiously anticipating a repeat of the prior years success or possibly an overall victory. Sadly, only one vehicle would finish. Behind a fleet of Bentley's was the Stutz followed by a Chrysler 75. With a fifth place finish, the Stutz cars were no match for the powerful and agile Bentley Speed Six models.

 

AlsAncle: Great coverage on Lockhart. Surely, nobody would ever fault him for drive and determination. Sad story about a poor boy who sacrificed his life for his dream. I think I enjoy the true stories about PEOPLE -- the good, the bad, the geniuses (there WERE those, too!), and the conivers to downright crooks.

 

SWI, that's SOME kinda story about the Gaylords. Like the Edwards America, Gaylord barely gets onto anyone's radar screen today. WONDER how many were made and how many SURVIVE???

 

After doing a little more reading, I have to ADD that the retractible idea (though hand-operated) goes all the way back (BELIEVE IT OR NOT!) to HUDSON in 1922 !!! Holey moley!

AND, there has been an apparent RESURGENCE, even of late, by several different companies, determined to do it better than Ford/Lincoln did. And THAT, not withstanding the recent citation by SWI that Gaylord's system worked smoother and with LESS components than Ford's.

Sheesh. Oh. well, we were told the '76 El Dorado was THE last Detroit convertible, right? Then, T-Tops appears and, pretty soon, real ocnvertibles again. So go figure! LOL

 

The Packard Pacifica started its life as an entry in a car design contest run by Saga Magazine in 1952. The entry won the contest and was printed on the cover of the magazine, but was never built. In 2001, Carl Schneider of Eureka, California comissioned the car to be built. Its main feature, a retractable hardtop, makes this Packard one of a kind in the world.

 

News, 2005

The Packard Museum auctioned off a 1951 Sega Magazine design Packard, reinterpreted and built by Peter Portugal,for $375,000. Portugal's Packards have been featured in Collectible Automobile Magazine.

Packard Pacifica