LCK81403

What is this vehicle? Cold weather, the man is wearing spats and a great looking Homburg hat, but there is no top for the car, the windshield is down and there is a vertical "air brake" deployed behind the seats. This does not look like a pleasurable cold weather motoring experience in the offing.

oldcarfudd natiled it. It's an air-cooled Holmes. Circa '21 or '23. It has a unique body mold that runs straight from the simulated radiator to the rear of the car body. Walt, I really like the Willy-Knight wood framing. It is nice to see what is underneath the skin. It is amazing that wood skeleton bodies were turned out so quickly. The curved wood looks like it probably was steam bent which is costly of energy resources and time consuming to complete.

Returning to some old business, as far as I know, the "hulk" is still lurking in the unidentified category on this forum thread. The "hulk" is apparently a commercial vehicle that carries a large tank over the rear wheels that probably would contain a liquid. The manufacturer of the vehicle appears to be Jeffery. The image from the forum was magnified on my computer and it held together enough to allow the name Jeffery to be read. In my photo files are several photos of Jeffery automobiles that have the same Jeffery logo on their radiators. The rear wheels on the Jeffery are remarkable, reminding one of the "20 Mule Team Borax" wagons. There appears to be pipes and a spray bar under the overhead storage tank. The spray bar appears to have spray nozzles approximately 8 or 10 inches apart, suggesting this vehicle may have been used to spray oil or possibly hot tar to pave a road surface.

Rusty Vega? The car question show on radio said that Vega's were made of "compressed rust". So it probably isn't a salt air thing after all.

According to "The Automobile", January 5, 1922, page 41, column 3, the Packard Motor Car Co. was to build an automobile factory in Torun, Poland. The short article, datelined December 21, 1922, Berlin, Germany, the funding of the Polish company would be $1,000,000. Searches of the internet failed to find any information that documents Packard production in Poland. Does anyone have information about this?

The horns appear to be three different sizes. The relative size / scale of the headlights appears to be virtually the same for the distance of separation. The three horns are close together and their relative, apparent sizes are different.

This Packard was delivered / delivery taken in 1926 and it already has more than 69,000 miles on the odometer. That's a lot of driving. I remember family cars being traded in for something new back in the 1950s once the odometer reached 60,000. The worn front tires on the Packard need to be replaced. With approximately 8000, maybe 9,000 miles expected for tires in that day, this used Packard was probably on it's eighths set of tires. IMHO the cluster of horns does not look good on this car, and the bumper is unimaginative. The '31 Lincoln K's front end with the second set of lights and a nice bumper does more to bling the front end than what is on the Packard. The bumper alone on the '24 Kissel looks better than the Packard's round pipe.

In a number of the photos that have been posted on this forum's thread, automobile tires both on the ground and retained in the fender wells show considerable wear. Rubber and tire fabrication technology lagged behind automotive and mechanical technology. Cotton cord was the most used material bedded in rubber, but the rubber compound itself needed improvement. In 1907 the Ajax-Grieb Rubber Company guaranteed their Ajax tires for 5000 miles and jazzed up their advertising with "cheesecake" of the day. The Automobile in 1922 published an article about an 8000 mile tire, and in that same year appeared an article about producing synthetic rubber from petroleum. Synthetic rubber would go on to be an important chemical compound in World War Two. Worn tire tread can contributed to or cause a traffic accident; it may be factors in the two accident photos. The left-front tire of the Los Angeles Fire Chief's Chrysler, and possibly the right-front tire as well, would warrant a modern day highway patrol citation of warning. The last photo also shows a worn out tire in a critical location.

Who is that man? He looks like an actor but the name escapes me.

Regarding a photo of a 1908 White automobile. The passenger at right-rear appears to be Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt. The presidential election of 1908 brought in Republican president William Howard Taft, who defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt chose not to seek a third term and stepped aside for his friend Taft. Mr. Roosevelt wore Pince-nez eye wear, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That type of eye wear pinched the bridge of the nose. Roosevelt's Pince-nez had a support and safety cord attached on the right side; the glasses could be easily removed and left to dangle or safely be slid into a pocket. The eye glass cord can be seen in the 1908 photo.

After studying this photo for some time, it is possible / probable that this was photoshopped. Back in the 1950s stunt drivers at county and state fairs would jump cars from one ramp to another. The cars in those days had V-8 engines providing way more power and vehicle speed (velocity) than would be possible with the car in the photo. Jumping / airborne cars lose velocity quickly resulting in the front end, with the heavy engine, dropping nose down. One of the major dangers of ramp jumping cars was loss of speed / velocity at the launch ramp and that could and sometimes did result in the car impacting the receiving ramp. Bad physical injuries and even death could result from ramp jumping. Considering that the old car jumping in this photo has wood spoke wheels, plate glass windshield, and a wood frame body, it is difficult to believe this is real. Seeing the distance the car has traveled from the take off dirt bank, logically the car should be nose down perhaps 20 or 30 degrees. The car's probable flight path through the air suggests that it may well land on its nose if not on its top side. The wood spoke wheels on the car should be turning very fast, yet it appears that they are not since the apparently stationary spokes on the rear wheel can be counted. The image clarity of the supposedly moving car appears to be much better than the clarity of stationary objects.

This appears to be a 1911 Speedwell Model 11-H Semi-racing Roadster. The attached B&W illustration is from The Automobile, October 20, 1910, pages 659-663. An article titled "1911 Speedwell Automobiles" provides details about the 1911 models. The 11-H semi-racer was priced at $2,700. Using an on-line inflation calculator, $2,700 in 1911 equates to $73,268.62 in year 2020 dollars. In case anyone is interested, the 1911 Speedwell article is in a google book, URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=p8sqAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA948&dq=kissel&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj767HY6efmAhXMGs0KHeqPApQQ6AEwBHoECAEQAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

I have owned Model-T Fords. This is a scary photo. "Four wheels, No brakes" is an old adage that describes the Ford T. The brake band in the transmission is definitely a poor second to 2-wheel and 4-wheel brakes. In the case of what this Model-T is doing, perhaps a "Perfect Drop Brake" in the front may be called for. It's a bargain at only $4.00.

John, this resembles the 1927 Kissel that is accredited to Jack Dempsey, illustrated in Floyd Clymer's Scrapbook, Number 8, page 215.

Matt has a point about the size of people. When I was about 10 years old I discovered my great-uncle's one piece bathing suit from his World War One days. I tried squeezing into it and the threads began tearing. When I was about 12 years old I decided to try on my dad's fleece lined B-17 bomber coverall that he wore for deer hunting. That bomber suit was too tight for me to pull on.

I had a '28 Dodge, a '32 Chevy, '35 Terraplane and a '50 Plymouth. Then I test drove a DeSoto (a '53 or '54?) and it had a hydromatic transmission. I could shift if I wanted (on the tree) or just leave it in high gear and drive it like an automatic transmission. It was kind of strange. I kept driving the '50 Plymouth even though that honey would only give me 9 miles a gallon. But gas was then was generally about 23 cents a gallon. Sometimes when the service stations were having a "gas war" I could nail 19 cents a gallon. One time 17 cents a gallon. Those days are sure gone.

Recently was browsing the WWW looking at 1980 Shay reproduction Ford 1929 Model A. Came across a listing by a dealer for the car in the attached photos. The stated / advertised mileage is 3,200. Their own photo of the odometer shows 22, 479.1 miles on the car. I emailed the dealer about the car and received a short reply that it had been sold. This appears to be a case of major in-your-face false advertising.

Several pages back a photo was posted and the car make, model, and year was not provided. Is this a 1910 or 1911 Locomobile, possibly a Model M?

Regarding the photos of the Wills Sainte Claire with the E&J headlights. Yesterday I photographed the red 1923 Wills Sainte Claire in a museum in Leadville, Colorado. The B&W photo of the E&J lights on the Wills also shows there is something that is unidentified between the headlights, in front of the radiator. The '23 Wills here in Colorado does not have the E&J lights, and has nothing in front of the radiator. Does anyone know what the unidentified object is on the black-and-white Wills?

John posted two photos, one of a Ford Model T sedan that had been wrecked by a Stutz. Here is a photo of a Model T sedan showing the body wood frame work. The Model T was a fairly fragile construction.

I remember gasoline dispensers like this. My father worked at a station that had devices like this. Years later when I lived in a suburb of Athens, Greece, our local gasoline station was busted by the Greek police. The station had gravity feed pumps similar to those in the photo, but the station proprietor had installed a tube inside the pump that bled off some of the gasoline and returned it to his storage tank. In that way we customers were continually cheated as we downloaded fuel.

Some of the auto accidents photos can be tough to view, however, the damage can be interesting to view. Perhaps police officers, highway patrol officers, accident investigators on this forum would find these accident photos interesting. No, it is not enjoyable to see this wrecked Cord L-29, but it is interesting to see the damage sustained by the vehicle, and guesstimate how the accident occurred. In the case of this Cord, the damage suggests a left-hand curve of the road, a fairly steep ditch, with the front end ramming an embankment, resulting in the car flipping over and rolling. The virtually bald looking right front tire may or may not have been a contributing factor.

Regarding this vehicle. The windshield possibly is an after market model. Many cars were sold without windshields and folding tops. Advertising for windshields was fairly common in several old journals found in Google books (such as "The Automobile"). For autos not originally equipped with windshields an attachment and support device would be needed. The wooden frame and plate glass windshield on this car really does appear to be added on. The cowl section of the body is the most sturdily built par but there is no fitting for a windshield, even if one were to purchase it as an option. An optional windshield as a planned offering for the car should have had a windshield mount / base built into the cowl. In this case it does appear to be either a home brew or after market application.

John, what pray tell is this? Another version of a land yacht?

In 1948 my father was working on a car while it was on a compressed air hoist, similar to the one in the photo. The compressed air tank exploded and blew my dad out of his shoes and slammed him against a wall. He was in hospital a good long while. It was a distressing time for the entire family.