Is this a Buick ?

[Bill - 29 Buick]

Trying to ID a car.  Is it a Buick ?  And, what year ?

 

Bill McLaughlin

[nzcarnerd]

1928 Studebaker, a Commander I think.

Edited December 29, 2015 by nzcarnerd (see edit history)

[nzcarnerd]

Changed my mind after a better look.  It has 26 hood louvres so it is a second series GE Dictator probably built later in 1928. There were three different series of GE Dictators built from September 1927 to about the end of 1928 with quite significant styling changes.  Probably quite a rare model even when new because there were so many variants.

[Bill - 29 Buick]

nzcarnerd:

 

Thanks.  The information is for Valentin Stoinev, in Bulgaria who is writing a book on Dimitar Soboloff one of Bulgaria's greatest motorcycle and car racers in the 20's and 30's.  He raced in a 1929 Buick roadster (not very successfully) from 1931 until 1936 when he replace it with 1936 BMW 319/1 made specially for him for racing.  Dimitar Soboloff is in the back seat of this photo.

 

Bill McLaughlin

[Bill - 29 Buick]

nzcarnerd:

 

Would you say this is the same car ?

 

Bill McLaughlin

[Leif Holmberg]

It could be the same car,just becuse that the front window seems to could be opened in two different ways.But I can`t see that the dash cluster are for a Studebaker at all.

I really hope nzcarnered can show a picture of the Studebaker he is comparing with.I haven`t found any yet,after a lot of time google searsing .Haven`t found any Studebaker 1928-1929 with that type of front window ider.The head light on this car looks smaller than the ones on all Studebaker those years too?

Leif in Sweden.

[Leif Holmberg]

How about moving this thread to Photo And Video Forum "What is it",proberly a lot more people will look at it I think.

Leif in Sweden.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Leif Holmberg (see edit history)

[nzcarnerd]

Leif, if you can find a copy of the Crestline book Studebaker Cars by James Moloney go to page 124 and you will see one of these.  It is wrongly captioned as a Big Six but is in fact a Dictator.  The bigger cars have 33 hood louvres and the Dictator has 26.  That book has many pictures which are wrongly captioned but with a little study and comparing the various pictures it is not hard to work out which are earlier and later models.  There was, I think, a lot of overlap of models, with newer styles being introduced at different time for the different lines, and there were no distinct 'year' models, the cars can only be dated approximately.

 

As I said in an earlier post there were three distinctly differently styled versions of the GE series running from September 1927 to May 1929, each only in production a few months.  I have a Third series GE sedan on wire wheels which must have been built in late 1928 as it was registered new in New Zealand in March 1929.  The new 1929 GL series cars began production in June 1929.  Total output for all three GE series was less than 50,000 and only a very small percentage (maybe 2-3%?) of those would have been open touring models.

 

As we have found when opening up spare engines during a rebuild there are also internal differences on what look to be identical engines. Not only that a gearbox change also required a change of driveshaft as the splines were different.  Fortunately we had enough spare bits.

Edited December 30, 2015 by nzcarnerd (see edit history)

[nzcarnerd]

Bill-29 Buick, the car on the boat is something different I think, although I don't know what it is.

[Leif Holmberg]

Sorry nzcarnerd,don`t have that book,not my soons either.Studebaker Touring cars those years 1927-1929 seems to be very rare.Maybe it`s possible for you to scan a picture of the Dictator.

Leif in Sweden.

[Bill - 29 Buick]

I've put both picture on the "Pre-WWII Photos & Video Forum What is it" site.

 

FYI.

 

Bill Mclaughlin

[nzcarnerd]

Still working on scanning a useable picture for this one.

 

Having another look at the original picture I see it has the distinctive 'Atalanta' hood ornament that was used on Studebakers in 1928 only.