Brass Era Mystery

[W MacDonald]

Okay, brass era sleuths. Here is a mystery for you. Can anyone identify this hood former, dash, and cowl combination? It belongs to a limousine body that just followed me home from Chicago. The intention is to reunite it with an appropriate chassis. Along with the accompanying photos, here are eight clues identified thus far.

 

1. The hood sides flare out at the bottom, a la Reo and others. The loop for the center hinge is broken off.

 

2. The dash is wood. Dimensions for the dash and hood former are shown on one of the photos.

 

3. The cowl is steel, stamped in one piece. (The body panels forward of the division are also steel.  Most of the rest of the body is wood, with a few small exceptions.)

 

4. The banding around the dash and the hood former are also steel.

 

5. Given the hole through the body on the right side, one might assume that the car was right hand drive and the hole is for brake/shifter levers. However, the hole is above the top of the frame, which is unusual. This required cutting through the body's wood sill, and doesn't appear to be something the factory engineers would have been happy with.

 

6. The dance invitation card found in the bottom of one of the doors is dated 1914, so it might be assumed that the car was in-service in 1914, and therefore it should be a model year 1914 or older.

 

7. Perhaps not relevant since it is not a standard body, but the shape of the rear fenders has to be such that the doors clear when opening. The hinge line is nearly vertical, so the door does not “lift” over the fender as some early doors do. That makes the shape of the fender quite complicated.

 

8. While the wheelbase can't be determined by the body alone, the dimension from the front of the dash to the high point of the arch of the rear fenders is 87 inches. So, it is probably a medium size car.

 

It's possible, of course, and perhaps even likely that the body was modified over time to suit different chassis if the owner wished to keep the body in service while updating to more modern drivetrains. Except for the hole through the right side of the body at the driver's seat, the level of workmanship is quite high throughout, and consistent from the front of the body to the rear.

 

I would be grateful for any input anyone has as to the likely chassis for which this body was intended.

[Sampson 35]

What a beauty

 

[Guest]

It is absolutely amazing that, with this little of the original car left, a hundred and three year old New Years Eve invitation was found intact.

A very nice discovery!

[Alfre]

mabe Renault 

[Mike36]

Where is Keiser?

[brasscarguy]

The hood former is very close to a  4 cylinder Reo. Reo's hood rolls out like the hood former. That said I can't believe that Reo would have produced a limo. 

 

I'm guessing this is near Chicago. I restored a 1915 Packard Twin Six Limousine with a Kimball Body. Kimble built car bodies during the slow piano season. Kimball was located in Chicago

 

just sayin'

 

brasscarguy

[Joe in Canada]

It also has the dash vents like reo does in the top outside corners. But these are rectangular rather than round.

[1937hd45]

What a great find! No hole for a steering column, so it must have had a near upright column inside, or behind the firewall, should be a good clue looking at old photos. I'll dig through my stuff and see what turns up. Bob 

[W MacDonald]

Thanks for all the responses so far.  brasscarguy, Kimball is certainly a possibility since the car seems to have been purchased new in Chicago and never left until last week.  There is no body tag on the limousine that I have found, nor any evidence of one.  From your work on the Packard, can you point to any features that are unique to Kimball that might lead me in that direction? There are some neat little features like the storage compartment covered by a flap in the off-center front seat divider. And the pair of flip up jump seats.

[J.H.Boland]

The brackets that attach the windshield to the cowl look rather crude.Is it possible that a touring or roadster body was reconfigured to accept the limo rear section and top ?

[Leif Holmberg]

Not right but close is this Welch 1905.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1905_Welch_automobile.jpg

Leif in Sweden.

[W MacDonald]

J.H.Boland:  It is certainly a possibility that the front section was modified at some point to fit a later chassis.  It can be argued that the front of the body looks "newer" than the rear from a styling and material perspective. However, if a roadster or touring cowl was repurposed there should be evidence of the original iron windshield stanchions. And, the front seat is definitely limousine.  So, where is the transition from touring to limo?  It's just not evident (so far, anyway). I sure appreciate all the comments - eventually the answer will become clear.

[Frantz]

That's pretty darn cool. I didn't get to go too deep, but look through Motor Vehicle Manufacturers based in Illinois and didn't see any local makers that seemed to fit. Does the sealed door area appear factory or does it look like a modified roadster body? I'm no expert... at all... just coming along for the education and fun of the mystery!

[JV Puleo]

I am suspicious that this is a taxi cab... the automotive equivalent of a hansom cab. Chicago would be a likely place to find one. I also doubt it is a "factory" job so I don't think the cutout on the right side, which I would take to have been for the shifting quadrant, is out of place even if it does cut through the sill. The bodies may have been generic and fitted to available chassis.

[Frantz]

From a practical standpoint.. there are some merits to the taxi idea. A limo driver would probably be expected to provide service to the doors, and having no door himself, it would have been a challenge to get out and open them. Having the  extra seat up front would provide an extra fare as well. The New Years Ball with very classy department store girls seems like quite a bargain too. I did the inflation calculation on 50 cents per couple and it's up to $12.21... Considering our regional Christmas party is tonight is $53 a couple... that might not be limo worthy, but maybe limo use was more common back then when not everyone owned a car? I don't see any auditorium type building at that street corner today (though there is a little strip mall that is a big enough property that perhaps it was there).

If this is the case, I would think the car would have an electric start as well, because again, in the event of needing to restart the motor, the driver would have to exit over a passenger seat in order to get the crank. That may be a stretch in logic.

[Joe in Canada]

What year did taxi cabs first appear? 1905 sounds very early to have a new custom made for this purpose.

[Frantz]

Taxi's and their equivalents go back to horse drawn era. I didn't think this body looked quite 1905 though? I was thinking 1910-1914... are their details I'm missing to suggest older?

[W MacDonald]

Not to say it ain't so, but the taxi idea is probably not the right track in this particular case.  The body was found in the attic of a carriage house on a residential property which was owned by a doctor at the time.  My supposition at this point is that it was a privately owned limousine. Similar vehicles could have been used as taxis at the same time, though.

[gwells]

It was not unkown in this body's timeframe for a well-to-do owner to have two bodies for a single vehicle and to swap them out seasonally. Wonder if that's how/why this body was preserved?

[Spinneyhill]

Looking at the cutout on the RHS, it looks to be bashed up around the bottom. It also looks to have a "flare" to make that section vertical as the body bottom curved inwards. This might suggest that the mechanism came down from inside with the lever (?) mounted on the outside with minor cutout in the wooden sill. The might even have been a steel plate around that cutout to strengthen the sill.

 

So does that flare look like it was always there?

 

The rear door is narrow. Hard to imagine it being a taxi?

Edited December 13, 2017 by Spinneyhill (see edit history)

[Spinneyhill]

this 1913 Cadillac has a similar odd windscreen mounting on the cowl:

[W_Higgins]

I would bet that you have a newer body grafted onto the front.  Looking at the second photo in post #10, it looks like it originally had concave body sides under the seat riser.  I believe that concave panel would have been a presentation surface and when the sheet metal was applied, they skinned over it.  It would be unusual to see such differing coachmaking techniques combined on the same body unless it was a modification.  

Edited December 13, 2017 by W_Higgins (see edit history)

[just me]

I'm not too sure that photo is a 1913 Cadillac limo.

Charley

[W MacDonald]

W_Higgins, what an excellent observation on the seat riser.  Thank you. In my excitement at looking at all the trees, I missed the forest.  You are absolutely correct, and exploratory work will begin tomorrow.  Of course, this revelation changes the whole nature of the project.  I'll post my findings.

 

Again, thanks to everyone for participating.

[mercer09]

Well, I dont know what it goes to, but would guess custom and 1912, due to the fact that there is a door on the left side and enclosed on the right.

 

It may have been re chassis ed as mentioned, and would explain the retrofitting of the compound curves.

 

As to starters- 1912 Cadillac was the first production car to have a starter, pertaining to the mention of this being a Taxi.

[Frantz]

I was looking at the starter option and there were a few other cars with starters prior to the 1912 Caddy.... but not electric starters. Most of the examples I found were Euro. I didn't see any examples that matched this one.

[Joe in Canada]

The body is wrong to me seeing the indented area for the rear fenders for an 05. Rear fenders were hung on forged Irons below the rear seat level .  Also it would not probably have front doors to be an 05 era.  Looks like it has been made up with that notch in the sill and then it appears to have been made smaller. If you look at the bottom of the cowl in the front. Where the large squared corner area has been cut out. If that cut out was factory they would have done a nicer job than that. The two vertical cuts are different and enlarge you can see the saw marks.    I think it was a transplant of some type onto a different chassis that was never finished and was stuck in the corner forgotten about.  

Edited December 14, 2017 by Joe in Canada (see edit history)

[West Peterson]

11 hours ago, mercer09 said:

As to starters- 1912 Cadillac was the first production car to have a starter, pertaining to the mention of this being a Taxi.

 

One of the first, but not the only. I believe there were two other American cars that also installed it in 1912, but they were relatively obscure makes.

[edinmass]

First use of an electric starter with a battery on an American car was 1895, and it worked well.

[West Peterson]

Ed

What car was that?

Speedwell used electric starter in 1912.

 

[W MacDonald]

Following the observation offered by W_Higgins, exploratory work commenced by removing the skin from the right side of the driver's compartment.  Sure enough, underneath was the original seat riser and seat side panel.  Once that was established, everything else that was an addition was removed.  The modification was done, presumably in the teens, by cutting off the body, including the sills, a few inches behind the leading edge of the seat.  Then the sills were extended to make the body longer, and wider. The modified sills reached all the way to the rear fender arch to change the shape of the arch for a different style rear fender.  All of this allowed the owner to reuse his older body on a newer chassis, although there was a huge amount of work involved in the update.  Cutting and fitting all those pieces, none of which are straight must have taken a lot of time.  Workmanship was really very good, including all the ironwork for the moldings.  The updated body can be assumed to have given the owner a number of years of additional service.

 

So, what is left is a brass era limousine dating to 1910, give or take a year or two. See photo.  The windshield may not be correct, but it is in nearly the right location. It will take some work to undo the damage caused by the modifications.  The good news is that there is enough original material for patterns for all the limousine specific parts.  And the pieces forward of the seat should be the same as a touring or other more common body style of the same make.

 

Photos show:

• the body as it was the day before all the new pieces were added (all light colored areas are where the original body was cut to allow the modifications)
• original paint and pinstripe on the seat side panel
• the return of the original fender arch
• what was visible after removing the right side skin (I couldn't have been happier had I discovered King Tut's tomb.  Those original panels hadn't seen the light of day for a hundred years)
• head on view of the seat and riser
• the iron moldings which were part of the update

 

From all this, the originally posted questions regarding the hood former, dash, and cowl are no longer relevant.  Thanks to all of you for participating in this discussion.

[vintagerodshop]

This is what the mystery Town car should look like.

[Guest]

What make is this car?

I'm not familiar with the SD or DS badge on the radiator grill.

[Lozierman]

Stoddard Dayton

Edited December 16, 2017 by Lozierman (see edit history)

[Ozstatman]

6 minutes ago, GregLaR said:

What make is this car?

I'm not familiar with the SD or DS badge on the radiator grill.

 

Stoddard Dayton?

[vintagerodshop]

1910 stoddard Dayton Town Car. Until now Belived to be the only Closed car Stoddard in exsistance.

[1937hd45]

1 hour ago, vintagerodshop said:

1910 stoddard Dayton Town Car. Until now Belived to be the only Closed car Stoddard in exsistance.

Thanks for posting the photos! Seeing a Stoddard Dayton engine running is a real joy. Stearns made a nice looking Town car as well.  Bob 

 

Edited December 16, 2017 by 1937hd45 (see edit history)

[Guest]

Well, now that this mystery has been solved do you still plan to locate an appropriate chassis and return this once fine car to it's former rank?

I believe it would be a challenge worth the undertaking.

[W MacDonald]

Yes, the search commences.  S-D made many models and wheelbases over the years, so it first has to be determined which model(s) is most likely the one originally intended for this particular body to be mounted on. The body is going to require a significant amount of wood work, but is fairly straightforward.  Finding a complete chassis may be another matter.  We'll see.  Thanks for your encouragement.

[brasscarguy]

Interesting, My 1909 50 hp Stoddard had the same compartment between the front seat cushions. I believe there is a 1909-1910 Stoddard limo is Vancouver BC for comparison.

 

you asked about Kimbal features. First of all they were screw happy. On my 1915 Packard the body had slotted wood screws at 1 inch intervals. Big head short stubby screws. If you remember their main business was Pianos, and of that era they were finished with screws lots of them. Also lots of solid hardwood was used much of it glued or laminated into larger pieces. My body has chain drive mechanism window raisers for the doors. The divider window was a sliding bypass affair in metal tracks.

 

 

just sayin'

 

brasscarguy