How did the concept of a touring car really work?

[mrcvs]

Curious how these were ever so popular back in the day--of course I love them!

 

It seems to me, at least if they were still manufactured today, that these cars would be best suited as either seasonal cars or as a car in a southern climate.  But, these were built in a day when multiple car ownership was fairly uncommon and ownership was not confined to southern climates.  My Maxwell, for example, originated in Massachusetts.

 

I suppose the canvas flaps existed, and these could be utilized in bad weather.  But how common were these and what was used to enhance the field of vision in the day prior to flexible clear plastic, like that employed in a modern soft top Jeep Wrangler?  Admittedly, the field of vision is already poor when I drive my Maxwell and I cannot imagine how bad it would be using the flaps.

 

I go to auctions fairly regularly and I have never seen old flaps offered in a pile of "junk".  Possibly the survival rate was that poor, but that seems unlikely.  Would every touring car have shipped with these or would this have been an option?

 

It seems that these would be common as I would think the amount of garage and barn space used exclusively for vehicle storage would have been far exceeded by the number of vehicles out there at that time.  Also, just like today, one could take one's vehicle on an errand, park it, and come back to find the vehicle saturated (hopefully just exterior surfaces) due to an unexpected thunderstorm.

[TerryB]

Had to be the price.  Open touring cars seemed to be on the low price end thus making them more affordable to a buyer.  Considering many owners were going from horse drawn wagons to a car the open sides might not have been as big a change as you might think.

[1937hd45]

It took a long time to convince people to buy Coupes & Sedans, the fear of broken glass windows was real. Wagon to Touring car was a very natural progression of things. Bob 

[Guest]

Many people didn't drive in the winter.  My Grandparents with their three children would put a large rock in the oven for a few days before the made their last trip in the fall for thanksgiving.  This rock along with several horse blankets was put on the back seat floor before the started out on their 125 mile trip to the farm.  Apparently those in the back were warm enough or knew enough to say they were okay.  Four hours each way with a midpoint stop for gas and a restaurant snack (would have been a picnic in the summer). When they arrived back in Winnipeg the Ford would have been put up on blocks until spring.  Obviously with little traffic and 35 mph the poor visibility was not a real concern.

When they traded the Ford in and bought the Pontiac sedan (my daily driver since 1959) heat wasn't a problem and the trip became two and one half hours. Even with a sedan with an heater the car was always up on blocks from Thanksgiving until May with the exception of 1947 when my Aunt from the farm, who was dying, stayed with us for the winter.  In 1959 when I started driving the Pontiac was out year round every day rain, snow or shine.

[John_S_in_Penna]

I especially like to read firsthand accounts from people

who were there--or talk to the old-timers to hear 

firsthand for myself.  Here are some observations 

from that standpoint:

 

One man's family had a 1922 Cadillac touring car,

used year-around.  Its paint was a yellow-tan color,

so the kids in the family nicknamed the car "Chewing Gum."

Now 98 years old, he wrote for our newsletter,

"It wore side curtains in bad weather.  Few cars of that

period had heaters, so in winter, people put on coats,

hats, scarves, and gloves to keep warm."

 

Another old-timer told me that the side curtains took

a little while to install.  If you were driving and a 

rainstorm came up, you were already wet by the time

you got the curtains installed.  He also said that it was

mostly young people who put the tops down in their

touring cars.

 

In 1926, one writer wrote that closed cars had

poor ventilation, so he preferred the open cars.

The side curtains managed to let in sufficient air

to ventilate the car.

 

One of our members has some early 20th century

fur gloves for winter exposure in automobiles.

The woman's gloves are mink;  the man's bear fur.

I tried on the bear-fur gloves indoors, and my hands

were actually feeling very hot after only half a minute.

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by John_S_in_Penna (see edit history)

[John_S_in_Penna]

Mr. CVS, the side curtains were indeed clear

when they were new, so visibility was good.

Only after some years did the clear portions

get cloudy or become yellowed.

 

And here's a little known fact.  Many people

recreate the side curtains for their old cars,

but they probably don't realize that the original 

curtains came with labels.  See these original

side curtains from a 1927 Buick roadster,

whose labels told the owners where the curtains

were to be installed:

 

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by John_S_in_Penna (see edit history)

[DLynskey]

Bodies in the early days were formed from a complex wood structure with the metal stretched over the wood.  Closed cars were much more expensive to build than open cars and were therefore higher priced. Look at the complexity of the roof framing on this 1928 Chrysler Landau sedan and compare it with a touring car. The price difference is easy to understand.

 

Don

[Rusty_OToole]

You are looking at the question from the wrong direction. From the standpoint of 2018, with our air conditioned streamlined sedans, the touring car looks hopelessly primitive. But you have to look at it from the standpoint of 1910 or so.

 

If the only wheeled transportation you know is the railroad train, the trolley car and the horse and buggy a new touring car looks like quite the speedy and comfortable mode of transportation. They are the most popular and practical all around choice. Closed cars, sedans and coupes are available but have many disadvantages. For a start, they cost 50% more than a touring. They are heavier. They are more prone to developing squeaks and rattles, and generally falling apart if used on rough roads. And almost all roads are rough in 1910. Then there is the hazard of being surrounded by flying plate glass in an accident, no safety glass back then. So closed cars were a luxury mostly for town and city use by the rich.

 

You and your family are used to travel by buggy or by  trolley car. If the weather is bad you dress for it, the same as if you were going to walk. In cold weather you wear your warmest clothes and bring along a car rug, lap robe or small wool blanket. You aren't going to be out that long anyway. You don't take long trips by car in winter.

 

Imagine that you never had anything but an open buggy before and now you can afford a new touring car. You are used to riding  behind old Dobbin at 5MPH. Now you glide along at 20MPH and if you want to, you can hit the speed of a lightning express train, or 50MPH. It must be quite a step up in comfort convenience and speed.

 

It isn't until the mid to late twenties that closed cars became more popular than open cars. The Essex  was a trend setter when they brought out their low priced Coach model. The introduction of safety glass in 1926 clinched the deal. If a sedan cost only a little more than a touring, and improved roads and car designs made the sedan more practical, then they sold more. But the touring car remained in the sales catalogs until the mid 30s.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Rusty_OToole (see edit history)

[trimacar]

13 hours ago, John_S_in_Penna said:

Mr. CVS, the side curtains were indeed clear

when they were new, so visibility was good.

Only after some years did the clear portions

get cloudy or become yellowed.

 

And here's a little known fact.  Many people

recreate the side curtains for their old cars,

but they probably don't realize that the original 

curtains came with labels.  See these original

side curtains from a 1927 Buick roadster,

whose labels told the owners where the curtains

were to be installed:

 

 

Yes, I did a Buick which had side curtain tags, but they just said "left rear" and "left front" and so forth.  I reproduced them, if anyone is interested, $20 postpaid for a set of six.....

[1937hd45]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That is a nice factory photo of a 1926-27 Model T Ford Touring, They must have been something to drive with the side curtains and NO outside rear view mirror. Bob 

[John_S_in_Penna]

Now, here's a further question about open touring cars.

I've seen an old picture of a snow-blown street in wintertime,

and the touring cars parked along the curb had been left open

and had become filled with many inches of snow!

 

Was that a common practice?  Just let the snow

blow in and then sweep it out?

 

Has anyone been around long enough to know first-hand?

[kgreen]

20 minutes ago, John_S_in_Penna said:

Now, here's a further question about open touring cars.

I've seen an old picture of a snow-blown street in wintertime,

and the touring cars parked along the curb had been left open

and had become filled with many inches of snow!

 

Was that a common practice?  Just let the snow

blow in and then sweep it out?

 

Has anyone been around long enough to know first-hand?

 

Interesting question.  We might also examined it from the direction of previous years.  The horse would have been settled into the barn, just not sure where the wagon would have been parked.

 

https://visual.ly/community/infographic/history/history-garage

Edited September 8, 2018 by kgreen (see edit history)

[JV Puleo]

And... very few city houses had garages or any place to put a car. If you were VERY well to do, you might have a carriage house but the vast majority of urban houses had nothing but the street to park the car on. This went on for quite some time... my grandparent's house, a small 2 bedroom bungalow they bought new in 1923, was on a street where all the houses were built by the same developer and nearly all of them had the same floor plan. On that street, only two or three houses I can remember had a garage. Two of these had double lots leaving space for a garage and one was a large farmhouse type building that was probably the original house on the piece of land. My parents always parked on the street which wasn't wide enough for cars to be parked on both sides so there was a city ordinance that required that cars be parked on opposite sides of the street on alternate days. Why they didn't put up the side curtains is a mystery but perhaps the snow was unexpected or there was a real fear of theft.

[1937hd45]

1914 T does look cold.

[mrcvs]

What material was the clear portions of a sidecurtain?

[A. Ballard 35R]

Eisenglass was standard for curtains and did well but got discolored and brittle with age.

Edited September 8, 2018 by A. Ballard 35R (see edit history)

[SC38dls]

Side curtains aren’t so bad. I had them on my 60 Austin Healy but it did have a heater  which worked well in Chicago weather. 

Dave S 

[hidden_hunter]

I have a heater in the rear of my closed 5 passenger Cadillac coupe (how you supposedly got 5 people in it is also a mystery) 

 

It has excellent visibility because all of the windows are massive including the rear. All four passenger windows are roll up as well

 

i suspect another reason for the popularity of touring will be the sheer amount of heat and fumes some of the engines produced. Even on a 30c day, it gets pretty hot in the 26 Buick tourer and one of Buick’s not so great designs has excess fuel drip on the hot exhaust pipe...

 

 

[padgett]

I remember my grandparents Cadillac having a holder across the width of the front seat for a lap blanket. I also remember two door coupes being cheaper than four-doors being cheaper than convertibles which were about the same as station wagons.

 

With the seats down my 72 A body wagon was exactly the right size for a mattress and used to pull into drive in movies backwards.

[Rusty_OToole]

In the early days most car owners had a garage, or stored their car at the local parking and service garage. It was common to put the car up for the winter. Since roads were not plowed outside of towns a horse drawn sleigh was better.

 

Car bodies used a lot of wood and fabric and paint finishes were no where near as good as today's. A car that was left outside all the time would be a wreck in a few years.

[Grimy]

Side curtains BLIND you!  (Site won't let me upload the pdf of the photo, or I'd show you).

 

On the other hand, in April 2017 we had a day of soaking, straight-down rain on a tour in the Mother Lode of California, no water came in the sides, even at 45 mph, so I wasn't tempted to go thru the drill of installing them.  I do have a photo of that...

[lump]

When my parents replaced the factory-original top on our 1923 Hupmobile touring car in 1963, they also had new side curtains made, using the stiff and yellowed originals as patterns. I still have that top and those side curtains. I don't recall ever feeling like the side curtains impaired the driver's vision. The driver's door curtain has a flap-covered opening, so the driver can use his left arm to signal a turn, and there is a notch in that same curtain to match the rear view mirror which is attached to left side windshield post. 

 

Our young family sometimes got the Hupp out for a drive in March or April, often during very cool weather. We had a bunch of fur coats to wear both as costumes, and for warmth. Attached here is a photo from about 1965 or 66, when we drove it on a visit to some friends' house, and it began to snow. Our friends observed that we were crazy indeed, and took our family photo in front of the car in our fur coats. You can see the side curtains in this photo, which were still quite clear. 

Edited September 9, 2018 by lump (see edit history)

[lump]

We became pretty adept at installing those curtains in a hurry; my parents didn't let rain keep them away from our monthly tours of the Southern Ohio Chapter of the AACA. But my dad always insisted on installing the components with the chrome-plate steel support rods himself. These rods were inserted into holes in the tops of the painted body panels. (He was determined to avoid scratches in the paint.)

 

Years later, after I had lost my parents in a tragic car crash, I was taking my own little family on an AACA tour when a heavy rainstorm struck suddenly. I raced to the Hupp and was installing the curtains, when a well-seasoned car collector and talented restorer who was a close friend of my parents came running up to help me. In his haste, the steel rod slipped and made a big scratch in the paint. He felt terrible about it, but it couldn't be helped. The car still bears that scratch today, and reminds me of that fine gentleman and his lifetime of friendship to our family. 

 

My job as the skinny young kid (at about the time when this photo was taken), was to work from the inside, snapping the smaller panels along the edge of the top which would seal against the door curtains. When it was raining hard, I would scramble over the seats, etc, and get that done quickly! I would guess we could install those curtains in 2 or 3 minutes at most. 

 

Edited September 9, 2018 by lump (see edit history)

[lump]

By the way, the raccoon coats are all gone now, but I still have that old bearskin coat my dad was wearing in that photo above. It was bought in the early 1960's from an elderly lady, whose husband had worn it when they drove their open car in the winter "back in the day." I'll bet it's nearly a hundred years old now...but it's gotten pretty stiff over the years. 

[4Hud]

Side curtains are not great for visibility but on a cool days with a wind-driven sideways rain they are a welcome relief and I think they help to capture some of the heat from the engine. I've been glad to have them for our 1915 Ford on several occasions.

 

. . . And they are nice to keep the dust out when you are farming with the old car.

[Rusty_OToole]

Canadian economist and humorist Stephen Leacock reminisced about his childhood on a remote Canadian farm in the 1880s. He said they went to town 2 or 3 times a year, and it was a 2 day expedition. They started off in the morning in the horse drawn wagon, bumping over corduroy (log) roads in the swampy stretches, getting out and walking on the hills, arriving in town in the afternoon.Had time to do their shopping then stayed  overnight with relatives.  Next day start out early and be home before dark with luck.

 

Years later, in late teens or early twenties he visited his relatives in  town and wondered what happened to the old homestead. By car, on good gravel roads, they were there in twenty minutes.