Question, open cars vs. closed cars, production numbers

[Dave Mellor NJ]

Model A introduced safety glass, at least in Fords.

[keiser31]

This car,posted by LowKat on HAMB,looks like the same car

There are a few differences....mostly the lamps.

[skyler]

last year at my clubs car show a 1899 baker shoed up. it was electric and the owner told me they were designed mostly for women so they did not have to crank start the engine. it was a fully enclosed car and maybe the reason was, again, it was for the woman of the day. this particular car was a real musuem piece and i was very surprised to see it at our show. turns out the guy and his wife got it from and old gent in tennesee who had it in his barn covereed in strw and hay for many years. car was in outstanding condition, he drove it around the field and let everybody sit in it, including me. he paid around 25,000 for it and when he started getting offers of 150,000 he called up a studebaker expert, the car was worth over one million, and he sold it for 1,200,000. he had just retired and all he wanted was an old car to play with. now he can afford a few of them. skyler

[Rusty_OToole]

What amazes me is how long the car makers stuck with the wood skeleton, these were complex and somewhat labor intensive even in an assembly line. The roof structures could have easily been built out of metal with a splice or two instead of a rather complex soft top. The wood coach builders must have had considerable influence and metal prices must have been excessive compared to wood with the price of labor being irrelavent. If we were to start over today (with technology from the past) i'd bet there would be little or no wood involved.

The wood frame body was a lot quicker and cheaper to develop and tool. But more labor intensive to build.

To tool up a full range of all steel bodies cost a fortune. Some of the smaller companies could not afford it. If you look closely at the modle lineups of some of the independents from the late 30s on you can see where they cut corners, such as using sedan doors in their coupes and skipping less popular models like convertible and coupe.

[john2dameron]

Interesting numbers on Model T.........and Dave, do you know which maker had a closed car before 1900? That would be interesting...........

It would probably be hard to determine exactly what the first closed car was but I would hazard a guess that it was built in France. The first American closed car I can think of right away is the 1905 Cadillac that Henry Leyland drove.

[Guest Casper Friedrich]

There is the often seen picure of a very early French Renault coupe, before the coal-shuttle hood. It's a type B from 1899, body by Labourette

Those Odds and Sods Cars

Here is a similar one with a dickey seat:

Google Images

This preserved Type C dates from 1900:

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