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Barney Pollard's Collection


Curti

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I recently purchased a 1934 Auburn RHD sedan in Michigan. The lady indicated to me that her late husband had purchased the car from Barny Pollards daughter, I would suspect some time in the 80's. Would any one know how to substantiate that ? It came to me sans title, so there are no leads there.

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Hello,

I too have bought a car from the "Pollard" collection--through a relative (Jim Dillion). Having restored this Pierce-Arrow and, I mean every inch of it, I can say that Mr. Pollard's name, or initials, were never on this car--anywhere!

At a AACA Meet in Michigan, less thaan 15 years ago, there was a EMF there and sure enough, the owner showed me Barney"s imprinted initials.

Bob Sands

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Guest InterState

Replying to this thread hastened me to join. Bought a Pierce Arrow from Pollard many years ago, was fire damaged, many cars were lost. Got it cheap and still have it.

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Curt, here is what I have got so far: "I will look and see if I can dig up anything. Sounds familiar though. I had all of the records but don't know what happened to them. I had a flood sometime ago and threw out tons of file boxes-mostly with research materials but who knows the records may have been in the debris as well. Sometimes I shake my head at myself when out of the blue I find stuff I was sure was gone. I have helped a number of people with similar requests-some had photos of the car at "The Yard" and I could tell them exactly where the car was in "The Yard".

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Barney Pollard Jr. is still in the metro detroit area. I was fortunate enough to have wandered around Pollards sheds and buildings a a kid. My father and his friends bought quite a few cars from him. the welded name on the frame horns is a fact, however it is not applicable to all his cars. I am currently considering purchase of a '32 8-100 Phaeton, that was a Pollard car and has been stored since removed from one of Barneys buildings in the late '70's. Curt, give me a P.M. and I will get you my number. one of my friends has quite a few pics from the pollard collection. and may be able to help. also, I am quite sure if you search Ph. numbers, you will find Barney Pollard Jr. in Wixom or novi Mi.

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Guest Jim Dillon

Curt, The car does look familiar although not the color-I thought it was dark-possibly black. If you bought it via my aunt Christine then of course there would be no auction records to substantiate it, as it was a direct sale. I titled personally hundreds of these cars and kept all of the records. As I indicated to Steve I lost tons of stuff to a flood years ago and it was just mush I loaded in the dumpster so I did not know everything I lost.

It is hard to misplace all of the files that held these titles but like a true Pollard I saved junk. If they are hiding, I did a pretty good job of hiding them.

Without a title to match up, it may be a stretch documenting it although our method of titling these cars was not something that took an advanced degree-we either used the engine number or "obvious" other number. I do believe there were three Auburns in the collection that I have a smattering of recollection. Terry just emailed me on a 32 which was owned by BC, Barney's son and then I believed my aunt Christine had two, although some of the early records had the dates of these cars all wrong. If you have anything else Curt or other photos let me know. My say so that it looks familiar wouldn't buy you a cup of coffee little alone document the car. My aunt's health is probably not all that well right now. I am sure BC would remember the car.

As to the putting my grandfather's name on the chassis that was rarely done and moreso by BC. BC enjoyed having the weldors weld on the large tools "stolen from BJ Pollard Co" so I am not surprised he put the Pollard name on a few cars chassis-emphasis on a few.

Bob Sands you did a great job on the Metropolitan Town Car. When Brunn came to visit me at my shop back in the eighties he told me he got the idea for that design from a Bugatti in France while he was working at Kellner as an apprentice. I asked him about color combinations and he told me he wanted it to have a more lively color combination but as he said, Pierce customers were a bit more conservative. Great car no matter what the color.

As to the fire, the cars that were involved in that were for the most part not restorable. I have pics for insurance of the cars that burned -just rubble for the most part-all of the aluminum melted and the steel frames were pretzels for the most part. Interstate if your car has some fire damage I do not believe it was from the 110 cars or so that were destroyed, that is not to say it escaped the collection unscathed.

Terry as to the 32 Auburn you mentioned I remember the car-will speak to you later.-Jim

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This sure is an interesting thread. I remember reading about the collection and the fire in my youth or semi-youth. I would have thought it was in the late 1960's rather than the 1970's. Steve, a story with pictures on the Pollard Collection, with all the cars standing on end would be among the most exciting articles ever to be published in ANTIQUE AUTOMOBILE. Earl

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Jim, thanks for taking the time to post. It is always fascinating to read your words as you lived our automotive history like very few of us could ever imagine!

When your aunt let me come down to see the collection (I thought I was coming down to by a Limited!) I came with trailer in tow. When she turned on the lights in the warehouse I literally almost fainted. As the lights slowly came on I saw the crane on the floor and several cars stacked. A grand collection of brass cars filled the outside edges.

I spent some time trying to authenticate the car I was told was a Limited but it was not. I seem to recall it was a Defender and bought by Manny Sousa. As I was leaving I saw the Curved Dash with the front converted to a straight dash. I was told that Barney drove it at Greenfield Village in 1954. Your aunt told me the price, she was firm but after turning the crank and hearing the sound I was hooked. I remember all the books in the front room as well. I think many were engineering books.

Your aunt was private but very gracious. I did send her pictures after the car was restored.

Earl, when Jim is ready we will do a story on Barney as there is a generation of hobbyists that need to know about the legends of our past.

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Jim, You do remember the 1934 Auburn. The door jams and firewall were not primed. The original color was a dark blue. A gentleman (now decesed) name Jack Stenberg purchased it from Barney's daughter. The engine number is GF1291. Being a RHD car it was exported; I believe to New Zealand. Envelopes from the 3M company in Auckland were found in the car.

The history is fun if the dots can be connected.

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Guest Jim Dillon

Curt, as I said I have a recollection of it dark-so dark blue is more in line. The right hand drive also seems to clear some of the cobwebs in my memory. I do have a recollection of the car but the only place I may have some of the copies of the titles may be in a storage trailer I have across town. If they are not there they disintegrated in a landfill in California. Next time I go out to the storage yard I will take a look.

As I said a little more than "he seems to remember it" will go along way-Jim

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Jim, were is the 1913 Chalmers that Barney drove on the 1950 Glidden Tour? The Elmer Bemis 1912 T was on the Tour as well, and I've had the car since 1983. I've always thought it would be fun to trace all the cars from that Tour and collect photos of them today.

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I imagine that the late Bill Zerega of Washington, DC was on that 1950 tour as well. I know he was on the 1947 or 1948 Tour with his Empire touring car. I've forgotten the year of the Empire, which I never actually saw. His son probably still has the car. Both his son and daughter are still active in the National Capital Region. I want to say it was a 1911 Empire, but 1913 also sort of rings in my brain. Bill was best known for his Stanley Steamers and his 1928 Chrysler roadster, the latter car I knew very well. I wrote an article about Bill and his early days with AACA for the 25th Anniversary issue of ANTIQUE AUTOMOBILE.

Old Antique Automobile magazines may shed a lot of light on some of these things. I have a full set back to March-April 1962.

What year was the fire, and what year was the auction? I'd like to go back into my AACA magazines and see if there wasn't a report on these events. I remember reading about it, but I don't remember when that was.

Edited by Dynaflash8 (see edit history)
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Guest Jim Dillon
Jim, were is the 1913 Chalmers that Barney drove on the 1950 Glidden Tour? The Elmer Bemis 1912 T was on the Tour as well, and I've had the car since 1983. I've always thought it would be fun to trace all the cars from that Tour and collect photos of them today.

Bob that car was one of the greatest cars to drive. The engine had never been apart (that I know of) and portions of the interior were original. I had that car up to 70mph on the Southfield freeway and it drove like it was on rails. I sold it to Matt Browning. He called me after it was shipped back to Montana and told me he was really pleasantly surprised at how great a car it was. It struck up a friendship with him that I cherished, good car guy.

My grandfather worked at Chalmers in 1913 as an engine tester where he worked on vibration problems. He told me it was kind of crude science but he would try and match gears by switching them to find the best with the least vibration. He said after awhile he could "read" the gears. This helped him get his job at Packard in the experimental department as an engine tester. His skills on the vibration problems he said helped him abit on the Twin Six issues and the Liberty aero motors. Matt kept the car until his death and the last I saw of any reference to it was in his nicely appointed auction catalog, wherein he stated he bought it from my collection (don't I wish I had enough to call a collection). In my opnion it was pretty close to the driving pleasure of a Twin Six.

A funny story was one day the air starter on the Chalmers decided to go south and I took it to the Greenfield Village Meet. So I had to hand crank it which was no big deal to my grandfather but I was not overly fond of it (the air also supplied air to the gas tank which made me shy away from any hills-which there was one overpass that made the car sputter a tad). Well they called my number to take the car in review down in front of the grandstands and so I set the spark and cranked it and then went back to reset the timing and this guy is waving at me frantically. So I go over and ask him what it going on and he said "Hey could you restart the car all over again, my wife missed what you did". I pleasantly declined ,but chuckled to myself.

If I see any reference to it I will let you know-Jim

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Steve...that was a very sad scene indeed. I remember seeing a few cars with the name stamped. I believe he started doing that rather late in his collecting career and that is probably why not all were stamped...he had too many to stamp and little time to do it.

Edited by keiser31 (see edit history)
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O.K., I'll add my Pollard story as well. When I was 5 or 6 years old, my dad caught word of a group of guys going to the Pollard collection for a semi-private "look-see" just before the auction/s of Barney's collection began. Since we were not on the official guest list, my dad didn't know what time to arrive and so, as it turned out, we were very early. After a moment or two standing at the locked gates, a woman came over and asked what we needed. My father explained that we were there to see the cars. She invited us in, told us we were a lilttle early and took us into the office for coffee and talk. As we soon learned, it was Mrs. Pollard. I recall she asked me what my birthdate was. Apparently, she was quite into astrology and began to tell me my likes and dislikes based on my being a Pisces. She then gave me a silver dollar!

Soon, all the others who were in on this expedition began to show up. When they layed eyes on my dad and I they instantly knew that we were not part of the program and asked us unceremoniously to leave. Apparently Mrs. Pollard was within earshot and announced that my dad and I were her personal friends and that if we were not invited than neither were they. That settled that.

What lay in store for us from that point on I will remember for the rest of my life. The hundreds of cars, standing on end, stacked in rows. The locomotives, motorcylces and all the rest. If I weren't already destined to become an antique car collector, (is this the trait of a Pisces?), I was from that day forth!

I will always think kindly of Mrs. Pollard and the kindness she showed us that day. It gave a 5 year old boy a wonderful hobby for life and a grand memory.

I recall seeing Barney only once. He did a small talk, sort of telling his life story, at a VMCCA, Great Lakes Region meeting. He explained his dislike of Henry Ford due to his slowness, or complete lack of paying him for trucking work he had done. He also mentioned his first working at Packard. He said, "They put me on a drill press. It was simple enough, but so was I so we got along good..."

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Guest Jim Dillon

Jerry your comments regarding my grandmother cracked me up. She could go on a bit with astrology and she had a thing about coins as well. When my brother and sister were on one of our many visits my grandmother would ask us how many days or Saturdays it was since we last saw her and she would give us so many coins for every day or week and we would all pile into her recently new 55 T-Bird and go to the dime store to pick out some collectibles to take home. Four people in a two seater and a small trunk (with a spare-no continental kit) left little room for large "junk".

I had to attend quite few of those tours you speak of to be some of the eyes and ears. In the sixties, we had to put some brakes on them as we ran into occasions where some of the guys on tours would take emblems or gear shift knobs or whatever. I remember people crawling across the cars in the restored car buildings-most of the time it was pretty good car people but other times the people were just an embarrassment to the group.

The cars standing on end were a sight to behold and pretty eerie at that. Although I walked in them numerous times, I always felt there was an element of danger and I would always catch hell when I got home as the grease on the cars ruined many sets of clothes.

My grandfather was fearless and he thought everyone else should be apparently. When I was 13 my grandfather suggested to my dad that I go to work in the restoration shop-he was the real patriarch of the family so his suggestion carried alot of weight. On one occasionwhen I was probably 15, some of the cars standing on end started falling and of course my grandfather nonchalantly mentioned to me to go pull them back up with a come along. No matter your age it seemed, if you were a kid not prone to swearing, working there you somehow added many colorful phrases to your vocabulary. WTH (or worse) sometimes was as common as saying good morning or whatever. It was scary stuff working 18 or 20 feet up standing on plywood or boards across radiators pulling fallen cars with come alongs and resecuring them with wire rope. One time when 5 or 6 cars had slipped and one had fallen through the building and the construction supply company behind us called to tell us. Well my grandfather in his understated way said "some cars have slipped-pull them back up with a come along"-easy enough. Took all day-open heart surgery may have been easier. The only thing that helped me get the job done was the guy that I got to help me was much more afraid of heights than I was and you could never tell my grandfather you could not do it. That was not in his vernacular. Crazy times although it was a great place to grow up in and around.-Jim

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Guest Jim Dillon
Jim, were all the cars stacked on end there for the duration, or could you remove one from the middle for restoration or sale?

They were pretty much there for the duration. They were stood up first and then the walls and roof were installed afterwards, so to get one from the middle you would need to remove the roof and have a long reach with the crane I suppose. It would have been possible to take a few from the one open side building in the very rear of the yard but there were enough cars on all fours without having to resort to the ones on end. When it came time to remove them for the auctions my uncle did an unbelievable job removing them without major damage. He did it without removing the roof but took each one as it came like dominos and let them down easily, but then we knew all were coming down and there was no picking and choosing.-Jim

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Guest Jim Dillon

My grandfather's first auction was a total debacle in the late fall of 1976. It was without reserve and as an attorney fresh from the bar exam I advised him to not conduct the auction without reserve. I was out voted by other members of the family. It was a cold and wet late autumn miserable day and many of the cars were hauled away on the hook of wreckers lined up and many were bought for $25 each. Right after the auction my grandfather called in the auction company and summarily fired them. From that moment on, I not only handled the auctions (all licenses, titles, working with banks, buyers and handling the money) as well as handling my grandfather's legal and some of the business affairs. I also was the keeper of the auction book and kept it for years. It too is MIA and may have have been destroyed in my flooded storage area in the mid eighties. I will look to see if I have any backup records.

We held I believe three more auctions all of them successful in terms of sales and money and all held with reserve. I believe the last auction was in 1978 (I am working without a net here and it was some time ago so I could be off a tad-although I do not remember any in 1979-maybe but I do not think so). My grandfather was quite ill in 1980 and he died in January of 1981. There were no auctions in the eighties. All sales of cars were by private sale. I have no records or knowledge of the private sales of my aunt and uncle as it simply was none of my business. I wish I was privy to all of those records but sadly I am not.

K8096, I have some memory of a 29 Stutz sedan parked next to a 29 Stutz coupe in one of the buildings after they were taken down but I do not have a solid memory of it and do not remember the radio. Sorry wish I could help you in that regards.

Hopefully I will stumble on some more records one of these days that would be more helpful. Jim

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Wow, Jim don't give out the whole story!:D I think you can tell how enthralled we all are about your recollections and your family's history. This would make one of the best stories we have ever done in our magazine so hopefully one of these days you will have the time to do it. Thanks for sharing all of this on our forum. I have heard from several people that this thread has been one of the best in years.

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Jim, I saw the cars stacked on end and met your Grandfather, I think this would have been about 1977. I was only 18 then, old car crazy. He allowed me in his office, we talked for a short while then he had to get back to work, fair enough. I am grateful that I got to see that and meet him (and your Grandmother, she was there that day). Any man as busy as he was that took the time to talk to a young car nut must have been a decent guy.

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I was going to school at GMI in Flint in 1955 and had met Mr. Pollard on the 1953 Glidden Tour. I called him and made an appointment to see his cars one Saturday, my room mate and I went down, I believe Pontiac, and he showed us through his collection. It was unbelievable. There were several buildings, one had only brass lamps in it. The cars that were stacked on end we couldn't see much, they were so tight you couldn't walk between them, but in a couple of buildings the cars were parked fender to fender and bumper to bumper. I was looking for a Peerless and he told us where it was and we had to slide down fenders and walk running boards to get back to it. He had several hundred cars and he knew where they were. He even showed us a garage that had a stack of brand new high wheel bikes, in the original crates, stacked to the ceiling. While we were walking back to his office I asked what was under the canvas covers, two American Underslunges, sitting out side. And inside his shop area were several Stutz, Mercer, etc. that didn't need restoring. He was proad of his collection and liked showing it to us. I got some pictures and will have to dig them out.

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